A Contrastive Study of Self-Assembly and Physical Blending Mechanism of TiO2 Blended Polyethersulfone Membranes for Enhanced Humic Acid Removal and Alleviation of Membrane Fouling.

In this study, membrane fabrication was achieved by two different methods: (i) self-assembly and (ii) physical blending of TiO2 in PES membrane for humic acid filtration. The TiO2 nanoparticles were self-assembled by using TBT as the precursor and pluronic F127 as triblock copolymers around the membrane pores. This was achieved by manipulating the hydrolysis and condensation reaction of TBT precursors during the non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) process. On the other hand, the TiO2 was physically blended as a comparison to the previous method. The characteristic of the membrane was analysed to explore the possibility of enhancing the membrane antifouling mechanism and the membrane flux. The membrane morphology, pore size, porosity, and contact angle were characterised. Both methods proved to be able to enhance the antifouling properties and flux performance. The HA rejection increased up to 95% with membrane flux 55.40 kg m-2 h-1. The rejection rate was not significantly improved for either method. However, the antifouling characteristic for the self-assembly TiO2/PES membrane was better than the physically blended membrane. This was found to be due to the high surface hydrophilicity of the MM membrane, which repelled the hydrophobic HA and consequently blocked the HA adsorption onto the surface.

Preliminary Study of Emulsion Liquid Membrane Formulation on Acetaminophen Removal from the Aqueous Phase.

The aim of this study is to develop an Emulsion Liquid Membrane (ELM) system for the extraction of acetaminophen (ACTP). Firstly, ELM was formulated by the screening of liquid membrane components where the compatibility of diluent with other membrane phase components was investigated. The chosen carrier, diluent and stripping solution must comply with the reaction at the interface of the membrane to support the simultaneous processes of extraction and stripping. Therefore, parameters such as stripping agent concentration, volume ratio, initial concentration of feed phase and HCl concentration were investigated. A stable emulsion and maximum acetaminophen removal efficiency of 85% was achieved.

Antifouling and antibacterial evaluation of ZnO/MWCNT dual nanofiller polyethersulfone mixed matrix membrane.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance and antifouling properties of polyethersulfone (PES) membrane incorporated with dual nanofiller, zinc oxide (ZnO) and multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT). The synergistic effect of the these nanofillers in PES membrane is studied by blending different ratio of ZnO/MWCNT nanofiller into the PES membrane. The fabricated membranes were characterized in terms of cross-section and surface morphology, surface hydrophilicity, pore size and porosity. The filtration performance of the membranes was tested using 50 mg/L humic acid (HA) solution as model solution. SEM image and gravimetric evaluation reported that the incorporation of both MWCNT and ZnO into the PES membrane improved porosity significantly up to 46.02%. Lower water contact angle of PES membrane incorporated with equal ratio of MWCNT and ZnO (PES 3) revealed that it has neat PES membrane properties and more hydrophilic membrane surface than single filler. PES 3 outperform other membranes with excellent HA permeate flux of 40.00 L/m2.h and rejection of 88.51%. Due to hydrophilic membrane surface, PES 3 membrane demonstrate efficient antifouling properties with lower relative flux reduction (RFR) and higher flux recovery ratio (FRR). PES 3 also showed notable antibacterial properties with less bacterial attached to the membrane compared to neat PES membrane (PES 0).