A combined interfacial polymerization and in-situ sol-gel strategy to construct composite nanofiltration membrane with improved pore size distribution and anti-protein-fouling property

Polyamide-based membranes with structural homogeneity for ultrafast molecular sieving

“…The pore size distribution of TFC membranes formed by PIP and TMC was determined by the rejection test using 200 ppm feed solution containing neutral organic solutes (i.e., glycerol (92 Da), glucose (180 Da), sucrose (342 Da), and PEG600 (600 Da)) under 5 bar. The detailed experimental procedures are described below 28 , 33 . Briefly, the permeate sample of a fresh membrane sample was collected after stabilization at 5 bar for 1 h. Next, the solute concentrations in both the feed and the permeate were measured by a Total Organic Carbon (TOC) analyzer (vario TOC, Elementar, German).…”

“…Additionally, a highly selective and permeable submicroporous TFC membrane with a large fraction of finely tuned structural submicroporosity was developed by using highly contorted triptycene building blocks of bridged-bicyclic tetra-acyl chloride as monomers 32 . Recently, a combined IP and in situ sol-gel strategy was proposed to construct a PA layer with a narrow pore size distribution, where the space-limited hydrolysis and condensation of sol-gel effectively tuned the mean pore diameter and narrowed the pore size distribution 33 . However, a simple, low-cost, and effective, readily available method to tune the nanoscale homogeneity of TFC membranes for the co-improvement of permeability and selectivity is still preferred.…”

On the Control Strategy to Improve the Salt Rejection of a Thin-Film Composite Reverse Osmosis Membrane

“…Cross-sectional SEM images were taken to observe the morphologies of support membranes and measure a mean active layer thickness using FESEM (Field-emission scanning electron microscopy, JSM-7600F, JEOL, Japan). The average values of the active layer thickness were estimated using the thicknesses measured at five arbitrary positions, as described previously [30][31][32][33]. The active layer roughness was evaluated with an atomic force microscope (AFM; NX10, Park Systems, Suwon, Korea).…”

Field Grand Challenge for Membrane Science and Technology

“…Characteristically, the membranes carry positive or negative fixed charges, which allow the passage of ions (Shin et al, 2017;Shehzad et al, 2021). Fuel cell membranes, such as proton exchange membranes (PEM) and anion exchange membranes (AEM) face substantial hurdles in cost and durability, quite apart from their task of maintaining high ion conductivity under various adverse environmental conditions such as elevated temperature and reduced humidity (Mustain et al, 2020;Jiao et al, 2021), but some approaches to achieving longer-term stability have been achieved (Liu et al, 2021b;Liu et al, 2022). Submissions on these membranes should include cell data and cell durability over a reasonable time.…”