Fabrication of high-performance forward osmosis membrane based on asymmetric integrated nanofiber porous support induced by a new controlled photothermal induction method

The high surface roughness and large pore size of electrospun nanofibers (ESNF) make it impossible to form good polyamide (PA) layers through interfacial polymerization. Therefore, ESNF cannot be directly used as the supporting layer of nanofiber-supported thin film composite forward osmosis (NTFC-FO) membrane. However, its advantages of high porosity and large pore size are required for forward osmosis (FO) process. In this work, for the first time, an asymmetric integrated ESNF is constructed by introducing photothermal materials PANI into the supporting layer and using in situ photothermal annealing to controllably reduce the surface roughness and pore size of the support membrane, which not only meets the requirements of interface polymerization to form a good PA layer, but also maintains the high porosity, large pore size and structural stability of the ESNF. With this strategy, the FO membrane with highly selective PA layer and low membrane structural parameter (S) were obtained. The results shows that NTFC-FO membrane shows high water flux of 40.2 L·m−2·h−1 and low reverse salt flux of 4.9 g·m−2·h−1, and specific salt flux of Js/Jw is only 0.12 with deionized water and 1.0 M NaCl solution as the feed solution and draw solution, respectively, and the FO membrane also exhibit excellent rejection to dye wastewater. It can be considered that the asymmetric integrated ESNF supporting layer constructed by the photothermal annealing strategy provides a simple and feasible method for the preparation of high-performance NTFC-FO membranes.