Fabrication and characterization of polyphenylsulfone-based membranes with nanocomposite additives for water purification application

Abstract

Nowadays, membrane separation processes are became as prestigious over other methods towards water purification, due to the low energy consumption and easy to accessible operational conditions. Polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) based membranes are most widely using water purification membrane processes due to its chemical stability, thermal stability, and better mechanical properties. But, one of the major drawback of this polymer is hydrophobicity. In current research, focused to enhance the hydrophilicity as well as the separation efficacy of PPSU membranes with the incorporation of various inorganic hydrophilic nanoparticles. In present work, PPSU based flat-sheet and hollow fiber membranes fabricated with the incorporation of various nanoparticles such as, BiOCl-AC, MWCNTs, ZSM-5, SnO2 and Al2O3-AAC via phase inversion process. The fabricated membranes morphological changes were studied with scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy techniques. The permeability and separation efficacy of membranes was assessed with water, proteins, dyes, heavy metal solutions and different oil/water samples using dead-end and cross-flow filter units. The PPSU membrane with 2 wt. % BiOCl-AC additive exhibited superior performance towards oil/water separation, above 80 % for diesel fuel and above 90 % for crude oil. The PZ-3 type hollow fiber membrane (0.4 wt. % ZSM-5) showed dye rejection performance of 90.81 % for Reactive Black-5 and 82.84 % for Reactive Orange-16. The PCNT-3 membrane (0.3 wt. % MWCNTs) revealed maximum heavy metal ions removal efficacy of 98.13 % for Pb2+, 76.12 % for Hg2+ and 72.92 % for Cd2+ ions, respectively. SnO2 NPs (0.4 wt. %) incorporated hollow fiber membranes (PS-3) were successful in rejection of Reactive Black-5 (RB-5) and Reactive Orange-16 (RO-16) dyes up to 94.44 % and 73.09 % from aqueous solutions. PPSU with alumina doped acid treated activated charcoal incorporated membrane (PA-3) (1 wt. %) displayed above 90 % rejection with BSA and egg albumin (EA) proteins, above 80 % and 70 % rejection with Pb2+ and Cd2+ heavy metals, and in oil-water separation exhibited above 94 % and 87 % rejection with bio-diesel and kerosene oils, respectively.