Mussel-inspired tannic acid/polyethyleneimine assembling positively-charged membranes with excellent cation permselectivity

Wenguang Wang; Jikun Sun; Yanqiu Zhang; Yang Zhang; Guanghui Hong; Richard Motlhaletsi Moutloali; Bhekie B Mamba; Feiran Li; Jun Ma; Lu Shao

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153051

Mussel-inspired tannic acid/polyethyleneimine assembling positively-charged membranes with excellent cation permselectivity

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Apr 15:817:153051. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153051. Epub 2022 Jan 13.

Authors

Wenguang Wang¹, Jikun Sun¹, Yanqiu Zhang², Yang Zhang³, Guanghui Hong⁴, Richard Motlhaletsi Moutloali⁵, Bhekie B Mamba⁵, Feiran Li⁶, Jun Ma⁷, Lu Shao⁸

Affiliations

¹ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
² MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China; School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China. Electronic address: zhangyanq@hit.edu.cn.
³ School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266042, China.
⁴ Center for Analysis, Measurement and Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
⁵ Institute for Nanotechnology and Water Sustainability, College of Engineering, Science and Technology, University of South Africa, Florida Science Campus, 1709 Roodepoort, South Africa.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Micro-Systems and Micro-Structures Manufacturing and School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Xidazhi 92, Harbin 150001, PR China.
⁷ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
⁸ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China; Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Mold (Zhengzhou University), Ministry of Education, National Engineering Research Center for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450002, China.. Electronic address: shaolu@hit.edu.cn.

PMID: 35032526
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153051

Abstract

The extraction of valuable target ions through monovalent cation exchange membranes (MCEMs) has been increasingly attracting in modern energy and environmental fields. However, the separation performance of MCEMs in terms of the permselectivity and cation fluxes, is typically restricted by membrane architecture and applied materials. Recently, mussel-inspired surface modification methods have been deployed in new membrane fabrications with special surface characteristics and functions. Herein, a facile layer-by-layer assembly method was designed to construct a series of de novo positively-charged tannic acid/polyethyleneimine (TA/PEI) membranes containing a negatively-charged support membrane and a TA/PEI selective layer. Notably, the peculiar support membrane with a much dense structure and abundant cation exchange groups can enable our TA/PEI membranes to possess high total cation fluxes. The selective layer with vast positive charges ensures mussel-inspired TA/PEI assembled positively-charged membranes to have a high permselectivity. Most importantly, compared with the separation performance of the state-of-the-art MCEMs, the superior separation performance of our developed new MCEMs at 5 mA·cm^-2 and 10 mA·cm^-2 is beyond the current "Upper Bound" plot between Na⁺ flux and the permselectivity (Na⁺/Mg²⁺), which opens new avenues for the construction of MCEMs. Furthermore, high purity of Li⁺ (95.37%) can be obtained through deploying mussel-inspired TA/PEI assembled positively-charged membranes with high permselectivity of Li⁺/Mg²⁺ (13.72), proving its great potentials in the field of resource recovery towards sustainability.

Keywords: Ion separation; Layer by layer assembly; Mussel-inspired modification; Positively-charged membrane; Resource recovery; “Upper bound” plot.

MeSH terms

Cations
Membranes, Artificial
Polyethyleneimine* / chemistry
Sodium
Tannins*

Substances

Cations
Membranes, Artificial
Tannins
Polyethyleneimine
Sodium