Grafting of diallyldimethylammonium chloride on graphene oxide by RAFT polymerization for modification of nanocomposite polysulfone membranes using in water treatment

Abstract

In this study, functionalized grapheme oxide (GO) was utilized as an additive for the preparation of nanocomposite membrane. For growing the polymer chains on the graphene oxide surface, the control living radical polymerization (reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT) technique), was applied. The RAFT agent, O-ethyl xanthate was grafted on the grapheme oxide surface and then the chains of PDADMAC grew from modified sites. GO-PDADMAC was investigated by FTIR, HNMR, FESEM, TGA and DSC techniques. The effect of GO-PDADMAC on the morphology and surface property of the polysulfone (PSf) membranes was examined using scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The contact angle (CA), pure water flux (PWF) and antifouling properties of modified membranes were also used to investigate the membranes performance. The results suggested that the water flux of membrane increased to 443.22Lm−2h−1 which related to 7wt% GO-PDADMAC/20% PSf membrane as well as the highest rejection for different heavy metals, namely Cu2+ (86.68%), and Cd2+ (88.68%) assigned to 5wt% GO-PDADMAC/20% PSf and 3wt% GO-PDADMAC/23% PSf, membranes, respectively.