Thin film composite polyamide reverse osmosis membranes with good chlorine tolerance

Abstract

A thin film composite (TFC) polyamide (PA) reverse osmosis (RO) membrane with good chlorine tolerance and good permeation properties was prepared by the conventional interfacial polymerization technique. Instead of using meta-phenylene diamine as amine monomer, 2,6-diaminotoluene (2,6-DAT) was used in this study for the formation of TFC PA RO membrane since the polyamide prepared from 2,6-DAT and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) showed good chlorine tolerance and proper hydrophilicy.bThe membrane prepared was characterized using different types of analytical tools such as field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), contact angle analyzer, permeation test set-up, and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The membrane showed good permeation properties for the desalination process, also it showed good chlorine tolerance, when tested by using a feed solution containing 2,000 ppm NaOCl for 20 hours.