In past decades, membrane technology
has been widely believed for
water remediation and purification. However, the waste membranes,
which is conventional nonbiodegradable polymeric materials, causes
secondary pollution and hampers the application of membrane technology.
As an industrialized biodegradable polymer, polylactic acid (PLA)
is believed as an alternative to conventional polymeric membrane materials,
while suffering from its intrinsic strong hydrophobic properties.
Herein we provide a facile method to improve the hydrophilicity of
PLA hollow-fiber membranes through tailoring the phase inversion process
by introducing Tween-80 and polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 (PVP-K30) as
coadditives. During the phase inversion process, Tween-80 enhances
the dispersity of the PVP-K30 and promotes the shifts of the PVP-K30
toward the surface of the membrane through hydrogen bonding, tailoring
the pore structure and the surface properties of the membranes. Consequently,
the water permeance of the modified PLA membranes increases by 816.4%
(151.2 L m–2 h–1 bar–1). Moreover, the membranes also demonstrate excellent antifouling
performance with permeance recovery rate up to 86.8%, showing strong
promise in substituting conventional polymer membranes for water remediation.