TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluation of thin film nanocomposite reverse osmosis membranes for long-term brackish water desalination performance
AU - Cay-Durgun, Pinar
AU - McCloskey, Cailen
AU - Konecny, John
AU - Khosravi, Afsaneh
AU - Thomas, Marylaura
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a United States Department of The Interior, Bureau of Reclamation – cooperative agreement # R13AC3400 and the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University . Article preparation was supported by the NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment ( ERC-1449500 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2017/2/17
Y1 - 2017/2/17
N2 - Nanoparticle addition in the currently widely used thin film composite (TFC) membranes is a promising technology to advance separation performance and bring novel functionality in membrane desalination processes. These thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes boast many advantages over their TFC counterparts such as increased water flux without compromising salt rejection and bacterial resistance. However, the stability of TFN membranes is unknown in industrial, long-term applications. Via interfacial polymerization, we synthesized a series of polyamide TFC and TFN membranes with different nanoparticle content, 0 wt%, 0.15 wt%, 0.30 wt%, in the casting solutions. At the United States Bureau of Reclamation's Water Quality Improvement Center in Yuma, AZ, the membranes were tested for ~ 3000 h in a lab-scale testing system. We characterized the physico-chemical nature and morphology of the membranes before and after the testing. All membranes exhibited relatively stable long-term separation performances. At the highest zeolite loading tested, in comparison with the TFC membrane, water permeance increased from 3.7 ± 0.6 μm MPa− 1 s− 1 to 5.3 ± 0.5 μm MPa− 1 s− 1 and solute rejection slightly increased from 97.4 ± 0.3% to 97.9 ± 0.1%. In this study, TFN membranes exhibited long-term desalination stability and improved separation performance compared to TFC membranes.
AB - Nanoparticle addition in the currently widely used thin film composite (TFC) membranes is a promising technology to advance separation performance and bring novel functionality in membrane desalination processes. These thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes boast many advantages over their TFC counterparts such as increased water flux without compromising salt rejection and bacterial resistance. However, the stability of TFN membranes is unknown in industrial, long-term applications. Via interfacial polymerization, we synthesized a series of polyamide TFC and TFN membranes with different nanoparticle content, 0 wt%, 0.15 wt%, 0.30 wt%, in the casting solutions. At the United States Bureau of Reclamation's Water Quality Improvement Center in Yuma, AZ, the membranes were tested for ~ 3000 h in a lab-scale testing system. We characterized the physico-chemical nature and morphology of the membranes before and after the testing. All membranes exhibited relatively stable long-term separation performances. At the highest zeolite loading tested, in comparison with the TFC membrane, water permeance increased from 3.7 ± 0.6 μm MPa− 1 s− 1 to 5.3 ± 0.5 μm MPa− 1 s− 1 and solute rejection slightly increased from 97.4 ± 0.3% to 97.9 ± 0.1%. In this study, TFN membranes exhibited long-term desalination stability and improved separation performance compared to TFC membranes.
KW - Desalination
KW - Long-term performance
KW - Nanoparticles
KW - Reverse osmosis
KW - Thin film nanocomposite membrane
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U2 - 10.1016/j.desal.2016.10.014
DO - 10.1016/j.desal.2016.10.014
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84996671024
SN - 0011-9164
VL - 404
SP - 304
EP - 312
JO - Desalination
JF - Desalination
ER -