Abstract
Forward osmosis (FO) could be an energy-efficient process for industrial effluent treatment given the easy availability of energy-efficient FO membranes and economical draw solutes. Due to its atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) structure, hydrophilicity, and anti-fouling characteristics, GO/r-GO layers showed excellent potential of application as dense layer of FO membrane. This study reports application of a hydrophilic natural protein named sericin as the doping material to r-GO-based dense layer to solve the trade-off between permeability and selectivity of FO membranes, and also to improve the membrane stability for higher operational hours during the antibiotics recovery process. Our membranes achieved an outstanding water fluxes of 54 LMH (r-GO-S) and 36.8 LMH (S-r-GO) for the initial 2 h of operation, and a lower specific revere salt fluxes (SRSF) of 0.12 g/L (r-GO-S) and 0.18 g/L (S-r-GO) as compared to that of commercial FO membranes (0.4–0.5 g/L). The optimized r-GO-S membrane showed higher stabilized water flux (38 LMH) as compared to r-GO membrane (12.2 LMH) for 30 h of continuous operation. Furthermore, due to cross-linking capability of sericin with r-GO, r-GO-S membrane exhibited better regeneration efficiency with FRR% of around ∼ 84% in active layer facing feed solution (ALFS) mode while recovering rifaximin crystals and yielded good durability and better long-term stability performance. Overall, this study demonstrates that sericin doped r-GO membrane can be used for fouling intensive FO based membrane crystallization process for the recovery of valuables from pharma effluents.
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