A novel positively charged composite nanofiltration membrane based on polyethyleneimine with a tunable active layer structure developed via interfacial polymerization

Zhibin Jiang; Jing Miao; Yuantao He; Kai Tu; Shunquan Chen; Rui Zhang; Ling Zhang; Hao Yang

doi:10.1039/c9ra00253g

A novel positively charged composite nanofiltration membrane based on polyethyleneimine with a tunable active layer structure developed via interfacial polymerization

RSC Adv. 2019 Apr 8;9(19):10796-10806. doi: 10.1039/c9ra00253g. eCollection 2019 Apr 3.

Authors

Zhibin Jiang^{1

2

3}, Jing Miao^{1

4}, Yuantao He^{1

2}, Kai Tu¹, Shunquan Chen¹, Rui Zhang⁴, Ling Zhang⁵, Hao Yang²

Affiliations

¹ Guangdong Key Laboratory of Membrane Materials and Membrane Separation, Guangzhou Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Guangzhou 511458 PR China jing.miao@giat.ac.cn jmiao@jinzhenghb.com +86-2022912525 +86-13829708450.
² Key Laboratory for Green Chemical Process of Ministry of Education, School of Environmental Ecology and Biological Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology Wuhan 430205 PR China hyang@wit.edu.cn.
³ School of Chemistry and Environment, South China Normal University Guangzhou 510631 China.
⁴ Shandong Disk Tube Reverse Osmosis (DTRO) Membrane Engineering Laboratory, The New Water Technology, Inc. (NEWA) China niureal@gmail.com.
⁵ School of Resource and Environment, University of Jinan Jinan 250022 PR China chm_zhangl@ujn.edu.cn.

Abstract

A novel positively charged composite nanofiltration (NF) membrane with tunable active layer structure was successfully developed via interfacial polymerization on a polysulfone (PSF) ultrafiltration (UF) membrane surface, using polyethyleneimine (PEI) as the monomer of the aqueous phase, and a mixture of isophthaloyl dichloride (IPC) and tri-mesoyl chloride (TMC) as the monomer of the organic phase. Interestingly, a synergetic effect of the mass ratio of IPC and TMC was observed on the pore size and the structure of the active layer of the resultant polyamide (PA)/polysulfone (PSF) composite NF membrane. The rejection (R) to the inorganic electrolytes increased with the mass ratio of IPC to TMC, while the permeate flux (F) escalated up to a 1 : 1 mixing ratio of IPC to TMC and dropped at higher mixing ratios. The rejection to different inorganic electrolytes decreased in the order of ZnCl₂, MgCl₂, CaCl₂, CuCl₂, MgSO₄, NaCl, and Na₂SO₄. At ambient temperature and 0.4 MPa, the optimized membrane demonstrated R and F to 1 g L^-1 MgCl₂ aqueous solution as 98.1% and 27.6 L m^-2 h^-1, respectively. Its rejection to various dyes reduced significantly in the order of cationic red X-GTL (100%), rhodamine B (94.2%), cationic gold yellow X-GL (93.5%), and brilliant blue KN-R (43.9%), in agreement with the decrease in the molecular weight (M _w) and the overall charges of the dye.