Poly(vinylidene fluoride) Substrate-Supported Polyamide Membrane for High-Temperature Water Nanofiltration

Abstract

Conventional polysulfone and polyethersulfone membrane-supported polyamide (PA) nanofiltration (NF) membranes suffer an obvious performance decline due to the drastic pore shrinkage of their membranes during high-temperature (HT) desalination processes. Herein, a thermally stable PA NF membrane (PVDF-IP-2) was successfully constructed over a relatively hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane using a continuous interfacial polymerization (CIP) method. The PVDF-IP-2 membrane had a moderate water permeance of 8.3 L m–2 h–1 bar–1 and a 99.7% Na2SO4 rejection at room temperature, which were comparable to those of commercial NF membranes. Introducing calcium ions (Ca2+) into the aqueous solutions further confined the transport rate of the piperazine monomer across the reaction interface through the coordination functions between Ca2+ and piperazine molecules, forming a high-flux (15.9 L m–2 h–1 bar–1 at room temperature) NF membrane (PVDF-IP-Ca) with an excellent Na2SO4 rejection (∼98.6%). Impressively, the PVDF-IP-Ca membrane presented an excellent antifouling behavior and performance stability during both fouling and high-temperature filtration tests. The Ca2+-assisted IP (Ca–CIP) strategy is expected to be a facile and universal approach to preparing TFC desalination membranes for HT environmental applications on relatively hydrophobic supports.