The Construction of a Hydrophilic Inorganic Layer Enables Mechanochemically Robust Super Antifouling UHMWPE Composite Membrane Surfaces.

Rong Liu,Wei Zhang,Shusen Liu,Yu Zhang,Junrong Yu,Jiamu Dai,Guangyu Zhang

doi:10.3390/polym12030569

Abstract

In this study, a facile and effective method is adopted to prepare mechanochemically robust super antifouling membrane surfaces. During the process, vinyl trimethoxy silane (VTMS) was used as the reactive intermediate for coupling the hydrophilic inorganic SiO2 nanoparticle layer on to the organic ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) membrane surface, which created hierarchical nanostructures and lower surface energy simultaneously. The physical and chemical properties of the modified UHMWPE composite membrane surface were investigated. FTIR and XPS showed the successful chemical grafting of VTMS and SiO2 immobilization, and this modification could effectively enhance the membrane’s surface hydrophilicity and filtration property with obviously decreased surface contact angle, the pure water flux and bovine serum albumin (BSA) rejection were 805 L·m−2·h−1 and 93%, respectively. The construction of the hydrophilic nano-SiO2 layer on the composite membrane surface for the improvement of membrane antifouling performance was universal, water flux recovery ratio values of BSA, humic acid (HA), and sodium alginate (SA) were all up to 90%. The aim of this paper is to provide an effective approach for the enhancement of membrane antifouling performance by the construction of a hydrophilic inorganic layer on an organic membrane surface.

Highlights

With the growing concerns of the worldwide increasing water crisis, numerous researchers are working on the problem
To robustly construct a nano-SiO2 hydrophilic layer on the surface of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE)/fabric composite membranes, the original composite membrane had been pre-modified via the chemical grafting of vinyl trimethoxy silane (VTMS), which was initiated by LPO
Nano-SiO2 layer could be uniformly immobilized onto the VTMS-grafted composite membrane by the hydrolysis of silicon on VTMS [40,41,42]

Summary

Introduction

With the growing concerns of the worldwide increasing water crisis, numerous researchers are working on the problem. According to our previous study, an extremely higher water flux, ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE)/fabric composite membrane was succeed fabricated by the composition between UHMWPE and pretreated woven fabric [7]; after the composition, the UHMWPE’s sponge-like non-through pore structure became penetrated, and the porosity and water flux had increased significantly. This composite fabrication did not improve the antifouling. An effective and energy-saving method to enhance the antifouling properties of the UHMWPE composite membrane has become an emergency issue of our work

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion