Fabrication of an antifouling GO‐TiO2/PES ultrafiltration membrane

Abstract PES ultrafiltration membrane is widely used in various fields due to its high‐filtration efficiency. However, due to its hydrophobicity, PES ultrafiltration membrane has poor antifouling performance, this reduced service life and increased industrial cost. Blending is a common method in ultrafiltration membrane hydrophilic modification. Adding a small amount of inorganic nanoparticles into the polymer membrane can improve the properties of the polymer membrane. However, nanoparticles are not uniformly dispersed in polymer membrane, which hindering the modification ability of nanoparticles to ultrafiltration membrane. In this paper, GO‐TiO 2 materials were prepared by hydrothermal method, and GO‐TiO 2 /PES blended ultrafiltration membranes were fabricated by nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPs). The experimental results show that GO‐TiO 2 disperse uniformly in GO‐TiO 2 /PES ultrafiltration membrane, which greatly improved the antifouling performance of the membrane. When the addition amount of GO‐TiO 2 is 0.6%, the water flux of membrane reaches 194.5 (L m −2 h −1 ), and the rejection rate of BSA reaches 89.4%. After three pollutions‐cycles, the flux recovery rate of the membrane is 90.2%.