A Facile Way to Fabricate GO-EDA/Al2O3 Tubular Nanofiltration Membranes with Enhanced Desalination Stability via Fine-Tuning the pH of the Membrane-Forming Suspensions

Abstract

Pristine graphene oxide (GO)-based membranes have proven promising for molecular and ion separation owing to efficient molecular transport nanochannels, but their separation ability in an aqueous environment is limited by the natural swelling tendency of GO. To obtain a novel membrane with anti-swelling behavior and remarkable desalination capability, we used the Al2O3 tubular membrane with an average pore size of 20 nm as the substrate and fabricated several GO nanofiltration ceramic membranes with different interlayer structures and surface charges by fine-tuning the pH of the GO-EDA membrane-forming suspension (pH = 7, 9, 11). The resultant membranes could maintain desalination stability, whether immersed in water for 680 h or operated under a high-pressure environment. When the pH of the membrane-forming suspension was 11, the prepared GE-11 membrane showed a rejection of 91.5% (measured at 5 bar) towards 1 mM Na2SO4 after soaking in water for 680 h. An increase in the transmembrane pressure to 20 bar resulted in an increase in the rejection towards the 1 mM Na2SO4 solution to 96.3%, and an increase in the permeance to 3.7 L·m−2·h−1·bar−1. The proposed strategy in varying charge repulsion is beneficial to the future development of GO-derived nanofiltration ceramic membranes.