TY - JOUR
T1 - High-performance and acid-resistant nanofiltration membranes prepared by solvent activation on polyamide reverse osmosis membranes
AU - Shin, Min Gyu
AU - Kwon, Soon Jin
AU - Park, Hosik
AU - Park, You In
AU - Lee, Jung Hyun
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government ( 2019R1A2C1002333 , 2019M3E6A1064103 and 2018R1A4A1022194 ) and Korean Ministry of Environment as “Global Top Project ( 2016002100007 )”. This work was also supported by the research grant from the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology ( KK1923-10 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/2/1
Y1 - 2020/2/1
N2 - We present a facile method for fabricating polyamide (PA) nanofiltration (NF) membranes exhibiting remarkable separation performance and high acid stability via solvent activation on PA reverse osmosis (RO) membranes with strong polar aprotic solvents (dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), dimethylformamide and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone). The solvents with strong solvency power for PA greatly swelled and deformed the dense RO PA layer, making the PA network more permeable and looser, which significantly improved the water permeance of the RO membrane while maintaining its high rejection to divalent salts. Consequently, the solvent-activated RO membranes exhibited remarkable NF-grade separation performance, exceeding that of the commercial NF membrane (NF270, Dow Filmtec.). Particularly, the DMSO-activated membrane showed ∼30% higher water permeance, higher salt rejection and ∼6.8 times higher monovalent/divalent ion selectivity than NF270. This was attributed to the strongest solvency power of DMSO among the solvents used. Moreover, the solvent-activated membrane exhibited the superior acid stability to NF270 owing to the higher acid resistance of its fully-aromatic PA chemistry than that of the semi-aromatic PA. Our proposed method is a simple, effective and commercially viable strategy for fabricating high-performance and acid-resistant NF membranes that can expand the application spectrum of NF technology.
AB - We present a facile method for fabricating polyamide (PA) nanofiltration (NF) membranes exhibiting remarkable separation performance and high acid stability via solvent activation on PA reverse osmosis (RO) membranes with strong polar aprotic solvents (dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), dimethylformamide and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone). The solvents with strong solvency power for PA greatly swelled and deformed the dense RO PA layer, making the PA network more permeable and looser, which significantly improved the water permeance of the RO membrane while maintaining its high rejection to divalent salts. Consequently, the solvent-activated RO membranes exhibited remarkable NF-grade separation performance, exceeding that of the commercial NF membrane (NF270, Dow Filmtec.). Particularly, the DMSO-activated membrane showed ∼30% higher water permeance, higher salt rejection and ∼6.8 times higher monovalent/divalent ion selectivity than NF270. This was attributed to the strongest solvency power of DMSO among the solvents used. Moreover, the solvent-activated membrane exhibited the superior acid stability to NF270 owing to the higher acid resistance of its fully-aromatic PA chemistry than that of the semi-aromatic PA. Our proposed method is a simple, effective and commercially viable strategy for fabricating high-performance and acid-resistant NF membranes that can expand the application spectrum of NF technology.
KW - Interfacial polymerization
KW - Nanofiltration
KW - Polyamide thin film composite membrane
KW - Reverse osmosis
KW - Solvent activation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074444632&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.memsci.2019.117590
DO - 10.1016/j.memsci.2019.117590
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074444632
SN - 0376-7388
VL - 595
JO - Jornal of Membrane Science
JF - Jornal of Membrane Science
M1 - 117590
ER -