Preparation of super-hydrophilic polyphenylsulfone nanofiber membranes for water treatment

Yan Wang; Radoslaw Pawel Górecki; Eugen Stamate; Kion Norrman; David Aili; Min Zuo; Weihong Guo; Claus Hélix-Nielsen; Wenjing Zhang

doi:10.1039/c8ra06493h

Preparation of super-hydrophilic polyphenylsulfone nanofiber membranes for water treatment

RSC Adv. 2019 Jan 2;9(1):278-286. doi: 10.1039/c8ra06493h. eCollection 2018 Dec 19.

Authors

Yan Wang^{1

2}, Radoslaw Pawel Górecki^{3

4}, Eugen Stamate⁵, Kion Norrman⁵, David Aili⁵, Min Zuo⁶, Weihong Guo¹, Claus Hélix-Nielsen³, Wenjing Zhang⁵

Affiliations

¹ Polymer Processing Laboratory, Key Laboratory for Preparation and Application of Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Material Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology Shanghai People's Republic of China.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, Huaihai Institute of Technology Lianyungang People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark Miljøvej 113, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby Denmark.
⁴ Aquaporin A/S Nymøllevej 78, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby Denmark.
⁵ Department of Energy Conversion and Storage, Technical University of Denmark Elektrovej 375, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby Denmark wenz@dtu.dk.
⁶ MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University Hangzhou People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Electrospun nanofiber membrane-supported thin film composite (TFC) membranes exhibit great potential in water purification. In this work, electrospun polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) nanofiber membranes were prepared and modified by heat and plasma treatments. The resulting membranes were used as support layers for biomimetic TFC-based forward osmosis membranes. Thermal treatment transformed a loose non-woven nanofiber structure into a robust interconnected 3-dimensional PPSU network displaying a 930% increase in elastic modulus, 853% increase in maximum stress, and two-fold increase in breaking strain. Superior hydrophilicity of PPSU nanofiber membranes was achieved by low-pressure plasma treatment, changing the contact angle from 137° to 0°. The fabricated exemplary TFC-based forward osmosis membrane showed an osmotic water flux J _w > 14 L m^-2 h^-1 with a very low reserve salt flux J _s (J _s/J _w = 0.08 g L^-1) demonstrating the potential for making high quality membranes for water treatment using PPSU-based support layers for TFC membranes.