Loose nanofiltration membrane for dye/salt separation through interfacial polymerization with in-situ generated TiO2 nanoparticles

Abstract In this study, a high flux nanofiltration (NF) membrane with hybrid polymer-nanoparticle active layer was fabricated by chemical crosslinking of piperazine (PIP) and 1, 3, 5-benzene tricarbonyl trichloride (TMC). An in-situ generated method was applied to deposit titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) nanoparticles uniformly on the membrane surface, leading to the enhancement of the surface hydrophilicity, roughness and relative surface area of the polyamide (PA) layer. The morphology of the modified membrane was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Atomic force microscopy (AFM), also energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX) was used to analyze the distribution of Ti element. Chemical structure was observed by Fourier transmission infrared attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) spectroscopy. Remarkably, the optimal water flux of the loose NF membrane was 65.0 Lm −2  h −1  bar −1 nearly 5 times as much as the pure PA membrane flux. The rejections of the loose NF membranes for dyes were almost all greater than 95.0%, while the rejection for sodium sulfate (Na 2 SO 4 ) was only about 17.0%, which indicated that the modified membrane had an impressive potential application for dye desalination and purification.