Abstract
Novel high-quality thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes for enhanced forward osmosis (FO) were first synthesized through organic phase controlled interfacial polymerization by utilizing functional multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). As 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) grafted MWCNTs via an amidation reaction significantly promoted the dispersion in organic solution, MWCNTs-APTES with better compatibility effectively restricted the penetration of trimesoyl chloride (TMC), thus adjusting the morphology and characters of TFN membranes. Various techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscope (SEM), sessile droplet analysis and FO experiments and reverse osmosis (RO) operation were taken to characterize and evaluate the performance of nanocomposites and membranes. The prepared TFN FO membranes exhibited good hydrophilicity and separation efficiency, in which water flux was about twice those of thin film composite (TFC) membranes without MWCNTs-APTES in both AL-DS and AL-FS modes. Compared with the original TFC membrane, the membrane structural parameter of the novel TFN FO membrane sharply was cut down to 60.7%. Based on the large number of low mass-transfer resistance channels provided by functional nanocomposites, the progresses may provide a facile approach to fabricate novel TFN FO membranes with advanced selectivity and permeability.
Highlights
Based on the above considerations, in this study, we propose a facile and low-cost method of the organic phase controlled interfacial polymerization to synthesize the method of the organic phase controlled interfacial polymerization to synthesize the novel novel membrane for enhanced forward osmosis by applying
Novel thin film nanocomposite (TFN) forward osmosis (FO) membranes with mitigating internal concentration polarization were successfully synthesized by utilizing APTES modified multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) via the organic phase controlled interfacial polymerization strategy
Through the amidation chemical reaction, APTES was first successfully grafted onto MWCNTs, and the resulted MWCNTsAPTES showed better dispersity in the n-hexane solution compared with the original
Summary
With adding nanofillers into the organic solution, most of the nanofillers will remain because the nanofillers are embedded in the PA layer and can hardly be removed from the organic solution In this view, since MWCNTs have one-dimensional nanostructures with large open channels of more than 5 nm, incorporation of MWCNTs into the active layer of the TFN membrane may reduce the mass transfer resistance to a great extent. Ts can obviously improve the hydrophilicity and dispersity of the MWCNTs in organic solution, and the new type of material compatibility between the MWCNTs and PA separation layer will be achieved Nanofillers such as metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and microporous carbon have been attempted to prepare the TFN FO membrane by incorporating them in the organic phase of interfacial polymerization [26,36] and the as-synthesized TFN membrane showed good water permeability and, so far, there is no report on fabricating the TFN FO membrane by adding MWCNTs, especially modified.
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