Herein we report on the formation and characterization of pure polyamide thin film composite (TFC) and zeolite-polyamide thin film nanocomposite (TFN) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. Four different physical-chemical post-treatment combinations were applied after the interfacial polymerization reaction to change the molecular structure of polyamide and zeolite-polyamide thin films. Both TFC and TFN hand-cast membranes were more permeable, hydrophilic, and rough than a commercial seawater RO membrane. Salt rejection by TFN membranes was consistently below that of hand-cast TFC membranes; however, two TFN membranes exhibited 32 g/L NaCl rejections above 99.4%, which was better than the commercial membrane under the test conditions employed. The nearly defect-free TFN films that produced such high rejections were achieved only with wet curing, regardless of other post-treatments. Polyamide films formed in the presence of zeolite nanoparticles were less cross-linked than similarly cast pure polyamide films. At the very low nanoparticle loadings evaluated, differences between pure polyamide and zeolite-polyamide membrane water and salt permeability correlated weakly with extent of cross-linking of the polyamide film, which suggests that defects and molecularsieving largely govern transport through zeolite-polyamide thin film nanocomposite membranes. © 2010 American Chemical Society.
CITATION STYLE
Lind, M. L., Suk, D. E., Nguyen, T. V., & Hoek, E. M. V. (2010). Tailoring the structure of thin film nanocomposite membranes to achieve seawater RO membrane performance. Environmental Science and Technology, 44(21), 8230–8235. https://doi.org/10.1021/es101569p
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