Abstract
Biofouling is a common but significant issue in the membrane process as it reduces permeate flux, increases energy costs, and shortens the life span of membranes. As an effective antibacterial agent, a small amount of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) immobilized on membrane surfaces will alleviate the membrane from biofouling. However, loading AgNPs on the membrane surface remains a challenge due to the low loading efficiency or the lack of bonding stability between AgNPs and the membrane surface. In this study, a substrate-independent method is reported to immobilize silver nanoparticles on polymeric membrane surfaces by firstly modifying the membrane surface with functional groups and then forming silver nanoparticles in situ. The obtained membranes had good anti-biofouling properties as demonstrated from disk diffusion and anti-biofouling tests. The silver nanoparticles were stably immobilized on the membrane surfaces and easily regenerated. This method is applicable to various polymeric micro-, ultra-, nano-filtration and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes.
Highlights
Membrane-based separation technology has become a well-known commercial method over the past decades for water treatment and desalination
Membrane biofouling refers to the undesirable accumulation of microorganisms on the membrane surface that reduces the permeate flux, increases energy costs, and shortens the lifespan of the membranes [5,6,7,8]
Silver usage as biocide in membrane processes is limited, mainly because of its relatively high cost and extremely low efficiency. This is because only a small fraction of the silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from the directly AgNP embedding membrane fabrication process are exposed to microbes [16,17,18,19,20]
Summary
Membrane-based separation technology has become a well-known commercial method over the past decades for water treatment and desalination. Silver usage as biocide in membrane processes is limited, mainly because of its relatively high cost and extremely low efficiency This is because only a small fraction of the silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from the directly AgNP embedding membrane fabrication process are exposed to microbes [16,17,18,19,20]. Yang et al and Ben-Sasson et al employed an in situ method to simultaneously fabricate and load AgNPs on the polyamide reverse osmosis (RO) membrane surface by chemical reduction [26,27] All these methods are limited to specific membrane materials with functional groups on their surfaces and cannot be applied to other membrane materials. A substrate-independent method is reported to immobilize silver nanoparticles on polymeric membrane surfaces with the stabilization of carboxylic groups of polyacrylic acid (PAA), which is grafted on the membrane surface through a facile ultraviolet (UV).
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