Abstract
Forward osmosis (FO) is an emerging membrane separation technology in environmental and industrial process. This paper presents cellulose triacetate (CTA) membrane containing graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets via blending to enhance membrane performance in forward osmosis (FO) process. GO nanosheets with various loading were added into the casting solution to prepare the modified FO membranes. The prepared membranes were characterized by morphology analysis and permeability measurement. The result showed that the GO nanosheets effectively improved the performance of the CTA membranes. The CTA-0.2GO membrane had the highest water flux, reached 1.5 times as high as that of CTA membrane.
Highlights
With the development of economy and society, clean water production and regeneration have become the biggest global crises for clean water shortage
It was suggested that the hydrogen bonding interaction between the acetyl groups of cellulose triacetate (CTA) and the functional groups of the graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets might occurred during the membrane preparation
The change in the water and reverse salt permeability of modified membrane implied that defects in active layer may be induced by the GO clusters emerged on the substrate surface
Summary
With the development of economy and society, clean water production and regeneration have become the biggest global crises for clean water shortage. FO has received increasing attention in membrane industry. GO has received a closed attention in membrane research filed. Most researchers accept the model that the GO-chip distributes hydroxyl and epoxy groups at random. These hydrophilic function groups on GO provide the facility for investigators to modify the membrane surface [2,3,4]. The modified FO membranes were prepared by incorporating GO nanosheets in the CTA matrix. The GO nanosheets were expected to improve the structure and enhance the performance of CTA membranes
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