In membrane making, surfactant material is one of the effective strategies to produce membrane / thin film with optimal and specific properties. This paper addressed the effect of Sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), Triton X-100 and Tween 80 as additives for the making of Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. The fabricated membranes were analysed in the aspect of performance, morphological structures, thermal properties and molecular orientation. Analysis results showed that the surfactant additives enhanced the membrane performance and properties. Surprisingly, the addition of 2 wt% surfactant increased the permeate flux of bovine serum albumin (BSA) up to 78.14 L/m2h compared to membrane without surfactant with flux at only 2.74 L/m2h. In addition, the role of surfactants on membrane pores and pore properties of PVDF UF membranes were examined. The cross-sectional morphological structures showed that these surfactants led towards the formation of macro-voids and finger-like structures as well as a spongy layer. The surfactants additives also improved the membrane pores and pore properties which reflect to the protein rejection up to 85 % and 78 % of BSA and egg albumin (EA), respectively. Moreover, analysis on the thermal features found that SDS, Triton X-100 and Tween 80 promoted better thermal stability and significantly fine molecular alignment which provided the versatility for the membrane to be used for any applications.

In this study, the effects of polymer concentration and additive in the formation of asymmetric nanofiltration (NF) membrane were evaluated. The membrane fabrication was carried out via dry/wet phase inversion technique. A new formulation of dope solution with polymer concentration ranging between 17 wt% to 21 wt% and the present of additive was developed. The results show that the permeate flux gradually decreases as polymer concentration increased, until 2.5969 L/m²h and increased the rejection up to 98.7%. Addition of additive, polyethylene glycol 600 increased dyes rejection up to 99.8% and decreased the permeate flux to 3.6501 L/m 2 h. This indicates that the addition of polyethylene glycol additive led towards better membrane performance. The morphological characteristics of NF membrane were analysed using a Scanning Electron Microscopy.

In this study, the effect of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) additive on the fabrication of asymmetric nanofiltration (NF) membranes was investigated in terms of performance, structural details and key properties. On addition of PVP ranging from 2 to 10 wt% into the dope solution, the fabricated NF membranes exhibited significantly different in properties and improved performance. In particular, the membranes made from 2 wt% PVP had the highest water flux and salt rejection of about 3.61 × 10–6 m3/m2s and 44.49 %, respectively. Modeling results revealed that small amount of PVP (2–4 wt%) produced finer structural properties. Moreover, the key properties (rp, ∆x/Ak and ζ) of the fabricated NF membranes were found to be within the range of that of commercial NF membranes.

The effect of surfactants that are cationic (Cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)), anionic (Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS)) and non-ionic (Triton X-100) on performance, morphologies and molecular orientation of Polysulfone (PSF) low pressure reverse osmosis (LPRO) membrane were addressed. The experimental data showed that the increasing of 0.5 wt% in surfactant concentration produced higher pure water permeation (PWP) and flux. At 2.5 wt% of SDS, the LPRO membranes achieved the highest PWP of about  64.42 L/m2 × h while 3.0 wt% of CTAB demonstrated the highest flux of 55.28 L/m2 × h. Analysis from morphological results foundthat the optimal performance at 89.6 % rejection was produced by the membrane with 2 wt% SDS which is a good promoter for the fine morphological structures of the membrane, thus producing fine spectrum of molecular orientation factor.

This paper addressed the pioneering work on the effects of dual surfactants component on the performance, morphologies and molecular properties of polyvinylidene fluoride/polyether glycol (PVDF/PEG 200) ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. The PVDF surfactant membranes were prepared via dry/wet via phase inversion technique with the addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)/Tween 80 and Triton X-100/Tween 80 into polymer solution. Experimental data revealed that the dual surfactants improved the membrane performance up to 120.84 L/m2 × h and 82 % of permeate flux and rejection of bovine serum albumin, respectively. In addition, 2 wt% of dual surfactants alsofound to induce the growth of fine finger-like and macro-voids cavities inside the membranes while the FTIR spectra proved that the existence of dual surfactants in PVDF membranes produced better molecular alignment which contributed significantly towards better flux and good rejection. In conclusion, the used of dual surfactants in the PVDF ultrafiltration membranes improved the performance-properties of the membranes and extending the possibly versatile for the membrane to be used for more applications.