Fabrication of layered silica–polysulfone mixed matrix substrate membrane for enhancing performance of thin-film composite forward osmosis membrane

Recent advancements in forward osmosis desalination: A review

“…Research has also been carried out on the improvement of support layers as a means for overcoming ICP through reduction of the support layer's tortuosity and increasing porosity [138,158,159]. For example, addition of electro-spun polyvinyl alcohol nanofibres into PSf support layer resulted in improved support layer features that allowed an enhancement in flux by up to 8 times compared to commercial FO membranes [52].…”

Water desalination by forward (direct) osmosis phenomenon: A comprehensive review

“…Thin-film composite (TFC) polyamide membranes have been fabricated in both flat sheet [136,[142][143][144]146,147,150,151,155,159,161,163,164,170,[172][173][174] and hollow fiber [133,134,171] configurations for application in FO desalination. Almost all of these membranes have been fabricated using the conventional technique for preparing TFC polyamide RO membranes, i.e., phase inversion (for porous substrate preparation) followed by interfacial polymerization (for formation of polyamide active layer).…”

“…In addition, the incorporation of nanoparticles in the substrate can often result in altered top surface morphology which negatively affects the integrity and deposition of the active layer during the interfacial polymerization process. In order to create an ideal interface for active layer deposition, Liu and Ng [174] used double-blade casting technique to incorporate nano-sized silica into the PSf substrate. The substrate formed contained a silica-impregnated porous bottom layer.…”

“…It is also important to note that the preparation of [174] the porous support layer determines the water flux since it dictates the ICP effects. On the other hand, the membrane active layer formed by interfacial polymerization determines the salt rejection and the reverse salt flux.…”

“…In order to achieve good FO desalination performance, preparation of membrane support layer is an important and crucial consideration. In fact, most of the recent TFC membrane fabrications have focused on the membrane support layer [172][173][174]. Ideally, the support layer must have small structural parameter, low tortuosity, high hydrophilicity, and high porosity in order to allow for high water flux through reduced ICP effects.…”