Effect of polyvinyl pyrolidone additive on the characteristics and performance of polyether sulfone membrane for reducement of Fe in water

Abstract

Decreasing the iron (Fe) content in raw water until it reaches the permitted threshold value can be done with filtration using membranes. In this study, the fabrication of membrane for Fe removal was done by using polyethersulfone (PES) as polymer and Polyvinyl Pyrrolidone (PVP) as additive. The addition of PVP aims to increase membrane swelling degree. The asymmetric membrane was prepared by phase inversion method with composition 18 wt% of PES and PVP with a concentration variation of 1; 1.5, and 2 wt%. Variations in the concentration of PVP added to the membrane influence the resulting membrane. Increasing the concentration of PVP shows an increase in the value of permeability, SEM results from modification membranes also show the different morphological structures. The results of the FTIR analysis show that the fabricated membranes have different functional groups. The swelling degree of PES, PES/PVP1, PES/PVP1.5, and PES/PVP2 membranes are increased with a value of 153 to 323%, while the overall porosity value is 62 to 142%. Membrane performance on iron content with 30 ppm feed concentration gives an optimum rejection value of 98.5%.