Probing the selective salt rejection behavior of thin film composite membranes: A DFT study

Highly efficient size-sieving-based removal of arsenic(III) via defect-free interfacially-polymerized polyamide thin-film composite membranes

Synthesis and characterization of novel thin film composite forward osmosis membrane using charcoal-based carbon nanomaterials for desalination application

Use of 2,4,6-pyridinetricarboxylic acid chloride as a novel co-monomer for the preparation of thin film composite polyamide membrane with improved bacterial resistance

Application of cosolvent-assisted interfacial polymerization technique to fabricate thin-film composite polyamide pervaporation membranes with PVDF hollow fiber as support

CO2/CH4 separation using inside coated thin film composite hollow fiber membranes prepared by interfacial polymerization

Development of a novel thin film composite membrane by interfacial polymerization on polyetherimide/modified SiO2 support for organic solvent nanofiltration

With the blooming of oil and gas industries, oily saline wastewater treatment becomes a viable option to resolve the oily water disposal issue and to provide a source of water for beneficial use. Reverse osmosis (RO) has been touted as a promising technology for oily saline wastewater treatment. However, one great challenge of RO membrane is fouling phenomena, which is caused by the presence of hydrocarbon contents in the oily saline wastewater. This study focuses on the fabrication of antifouling RO membrane for accomplishing simultaneous separation of salt and oil. Thin film nanocomposite (TFN) RO membrane was formed by the layer by layer (LbL) assembly of positively charged TNS (pTNS) and negatively charged TNS (nTNS) on the surface of thin film composite (TFC) membrane. The unique features, rendered by hydrophilic TNS bilayer assembled on TFC membrane in the formation of a hydration layer to enhance the fouling resistance by high concentration oily saline water while maintaining the salt rejection, were discussed in this study. The characterization findings revealed that the surface properties of membrane were improved in terms of surface hydrophilicity, surface roughness, and polyamide(PA) cross-linking. The TFC RO membrane coated with 2-bilayer of TNS achieved >99% and >98% for oil and salt rejection, respectively. During the long-term study, the 2TNS-PA TFN membrane outperformed the pristine TFC membrane by exhibiting high permeability and much lower fouling propensity for low to high concentration of oily saline water concentration (1000 ppm, 5000 ppm and 10,000 ppm) over a 960 min operation. Meanwhile, the average permeability of uncoated TFC membrane could only be recovered by 95.7%, 89.1% and 82.9% for 1000 ppm, 5000 ppm and 10,000 ppm of the oily saline feedwater, respectively. The 2TNS-PA TFN membrane achieved almost 100% flux recovery for three cycles by hydraulic washing.

Thin film composite polyesteramide nanofiltration membranes were fabricated with interfacial polymerization from carboxylated chitosan and trimesoyl chloride on a microporous polysulfone support membrane. Salt rejection was improved by building a multiple-layer structure that was formed by sequentially repeating the cycles of the interfacial reactions. The chemical structure, surface morphology and charge were characterized for the polyesteramide top layer. The effects of the concentrations of the reactant solutions and the number of cycles of reactant depositions and reactions on the separation performance were investigated. The single-layer polyesteramide membrane produced from 3.5 wt% carboxylated chitosan and 0.7 wt% TMC has a negatively charged surface and shows favorable separation performance: pure water permeation flux of 7.3 L/(m2 h) at 0.6 MPa gauge feed pressure, and salt rejection of 95.0% for Na2SO4, 65.7% for MgSO4, 33.2% for MgCl2 and 66.3% for NaCl. The multiple-layer polyesteramide membranes show a more negatively charged surface and higher salt rejection than the single-layer polyesteramide membranes. The single-layer polyesteramide membrane PS-[(C-CS)1.0/TMC] with a relatively loose structure shows good retention for the reactive black 5 anionic dye. This study opens an interesting research area to explore a new type of thin film composite nanofiltration membrane.

Improved performance of poly(piperazine amide) composite nanofiltration membranes by adding aluminum hydroxide nanospheres

Pervaporation, mainly utilized to separate azeotropic mixtures, has been paid much attention for desalination in recent years due to its numerous advantages. The membranes based on thin-film composite structure have gained great interest in pervaporation due to their thin thickness, controllable hydrophilicity, and crosslinking density which affects the permeation flux and selectivity of the membranes. In this study, a polyamide thin-film composite (PA-TFC) membrane was fabricated through interfacial polymerization between amine monomers and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) on a polysulfone porous substrate (PSf). Four different diamine monomers, including ethylenediamine (EDA), triethylenetetramine (TETA), m-phenylenediamine (MPD), and piperazine (PIP) were used to investigate the effect of the monomers on the pervaporation performance of the resulting membrane for separation of sodium chloride (NaCl) and arsenate (As(v)) aqueous solution. The physicochemical properties of the membrane were characterized using attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and pure water contact angle measurement. Furthermore, the performance of the fabricated membranes was studied by pervaporation separation of 0.15 mg L−1 As(v) and 5 g L−1 NaCl aqueous solution at 40 °C, respectively. The results show that the rejections of the membrane are insignificantly affected by the chemical structures of the amines, and both the As(v) rejection and NaCl rejection are higher than 99.9%. However, the permeation flux decreases in the order of PIP-TMC membrane > TETA-TMC membrane ∼ EDA-TMC membrane > MPD-TMC membrane. Furthermore, the operating conditions are found to affect the separation performance of the PIP-TMC membrane significantly. In particular, the elevating operation temperature profoundly increases the permeation flux, while the increase in high salt concentration leads to a slight decrease in rejection but a significant decline in permeation flux. The derived membrane shows a reasonable permeation flux of 16.1 kg m−2 h−1 and ca. 99.9% rejection for 1.5 mg L−1 As(v) removal, as well as 13 kg m−2 h−1 and 99.3% rejection for 30 g L−1 NaCl separation at 60 °C. The sufficient permeation flux and good rejection of As(v) and NaCl of the membrane suggested the promising application of PA-TFC membrane for pervaporation removal of toxic arsenic from water and desalination of seawater.

Interfacially polymerized thin-film composite polyamide membranes: Effects of annealing processes on pervaporative dehydration of aqueous alcohol solutions

Thin film composite membranes containing intrinsic CD cavities in the selective layer

Thin-film composite reverse osmosis membranes of polyamides were prepared by interfacial polymerization. Various benzenediamines and poly(aminostyrene) were interfacially reacted with various acyl chlorides to prepare a skin layer of composite membranes. Among the membranes prepared from the structural isomeric monomers of benzenediamines and acyl chlorides, i.e., the same chemical composition but different in the position of functional groups on the aromatic ring, the membrane with the best salt rejection was obtained when the reacting groups forming amide are located at the same position on the aromatic ring. Membranes prepared by interfacially reacting various diamines with trimesoyl chloride revealed that the salt rejection depends on the linear chain structure of polyamides and network formed by crosslinking. Membranes obtained by interfacial polymerization of poly(aminostyrene) with trimesoyl chloride showed higher water flux but lower salt rejection than those obtained by interfacial polymerization of various benzenediamines with trimesoyl chloride. Membranes obtained here showed the typical trade-off behavior between salt rejection and water flux. However, membranes prepared by interfacially reacting trimesoyl chloride with a mixture of poly(aminostyrene) and m-phenylenediamine or a mixture of poly(aminostyrene), m-phenylenediamine, and diaminobenzoic acid showed a performance advantage over usual membranes, i.e., a large positive deviation from the usual trade-off trend. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci B: Polym Phys 36: 1821–1830, 1998

Novel tertiary amino containing thin film composite membranes prepared by interfacial polymerization for CO2 capture

Simple method for preparing thin film composite polyamide nanofiltration membrane based on hydrophobic polyvinylidene fluoride support membrane