Mitigating the hydraulic compression of nanofiltration hollow fiber membranes through a single-step direct spinning technique.

Abstract

Most nanofiltration (NF) membranes have been made through complicated multistep or thin-film composite processes. They also suffer the compaction issue that reduces permeate flux in pressure-driven filtration processes. A single-step coextrusion hollow fiber fabrication technique via immiscibility induced phase separation (I(2)PS) process is presented in this study to fabricate NF hollow fiber membranes. A protective layer is concurrently formed on top of the selective layer during the phase inversion process. The fabricated hollow fiber membrane has a narrow pore size distribution with a molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) of 470 Da. The outer layer of the I(2)PS hollow fiber is found to serve as a buffering layer that mitigates hydraulic compression on the compaction of dense-selective layer and sublayer and helps to retain membrane performance during nanofiltration operations. The newly fabricated NF hollow fiber membrane exhibits an average pure water permeability of 3.2 L m(-2) h(-1) bar(-1) and shows good rejections toward the testing dyes. This study may offer a simple, direct, and cost-effective approach to fabricate NF hollow fiber membranes.