Prospects of Polymeric Nanocomposite Membranes for Water Purification and Scalability and their Health and Environmental Impacts: A Review (original) (raw)
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Polymers
Nanomaterials have been extensively used in polymer nanocomposite membranes due to the inclusion of unique features that enhance water and wastewater treatment performance. Compared to the pristine membranes, the incorporation of nanomodifiers not only improves membrane performance (water permeability, salt rejection, contaminant removal, selectivity), but also the intrinsic properties (hydrophilicity, porosity, antifouling properties, antimicrobial properties, mechanical, thermal, and chemical stability) of these membranes. This review focuses on applications of different types of nanomaterials: zero-dimensional (metal/metal oxide nanoparticles), one-dimensional (carbon nanotubes), two-dimensional (graphene and associated structures), and three-dimensional (zeolites and associated frameworks) nanomaterials combined with polymers towards novel polymeric nanocomposites for water and wastewater treatment applications. This review will show that combinations of nanomaterials and polyme...
A Comprehensive Review on Polymeric Nano-Composite Membranes for Water Treatment
Journal of Membrane Science & Technology
During last few decades, membrane technology has emerged as an efficient technique over conventional methods due to its high removal capacity, ease in operation and cost effectiveness for wastewater treatment and production of clean water. Membrane based separations are commonly based on polymeric membranes because of their higher flexibility, easily pore forming mechanism, low cost and smaller space for installation as compared to inorganic membranes. Commonly employed membrane fabrication phase inversion method has been shortly reviewed in this article. Major limitation of membrane based separations is fouling and polymeric membranes being hydrophobic in nature are more prone to fouling. Fouling is a deposition of various colloidal particles, macromolecules (polysaccharides, proteins), salts etc. on membrane surface and within pores thus impedes membrane performance, reduces flux and results in high cost. Modification of polymeric membranes due to its tailoring ability with nanomaterials such as metal based and carbon based results in polymeric nano-composite membranes with high antifouling characteristics. Nanomaterials impart high selectivity, permeability, hydrophilicity, thermal stability, mechanical strength, and antibacterial properties to polymeric membranes via blending, coating etc. modification methods. Characterization techniques has also discussed in later section for studying morphological properties and performance of polymer nano-composite membranes.
Polymer-matrix nanocomposite membranes for water treatment
Journal of Membrane Science, 2015
One of the grand challenges to sustain the modern society is to secure adequate water resources of desirable quality for various designated uses. To address this challenge, membrane water treatment is expected to play an increasingly important role in areas such as drinking water treatment, brackish and seawater desalination, and wastewater treatment and reuse. Existing membranes for water treatment, typically polymeric in nature, are still restricted by several challenges including the trade-off relationship between permeability and selectivity (also called Robeson upper boundary in membrane gas separation), and low resistance to fouling. Nanocomposite membranes, a new class of membranes fabricated by combining polymeric materials with nanomaterials, are emerging as a promising solution to these challenges. The advanced nanocomposite membranes could be designed to meet specific water treatment applications by tuning their structure and physicochemical properties (e.g. hydrophilicity, porosity, charge density, and thermal and mechanical stability) and introducing unique functionalities (e.g. antibacterial, photocatalytic or adsorptive capabilities). This review is to summarize the recent scientific and technological advances in the development of nanocomposite membranes for water treatment. The nanocomposite membranes were classified into (1) conventional nanocomposite, (2) thin-film nanocomposite (TFN), (3) thin-film composite (TFC) with nanocomposite substrate, and (4) surface located nanocomposite, based on the membrane structure and location of nanomaterial. Challenges and future research directions in developing high performance nanocomposite membranes were also be discussed.
Progress of Nanocomposite Membranes for Water Treatment
Membranes, 2018
The use of membrane-based technologies has been applied for water treatment applications; however, the limitations of conventional polymeric membranes have led to the addition of inorganic fillers to enhance their performance. In recent years, nanocomposite membranes have greatly attracted the attention of scientists for water treatment applications such as wastewater treatment, water purification, removal of microorganisms, chemical compounds, heavy metals, etc. The incorporation of different nanofillers, such as carbon nanotubes, zinc oxide, graphene oxide, silver and copper nanoparticles, titanium dioxide, 2D materials, and some other novel nano-scale materials into polymeric membranes have provided great advances, e.g., enhancing on hydrophilicity, suppressing the accumulation of pollutants and foulants, enhancing rejection efficiencies and improving mechanical properties and thermal stabilities. Thereby, the aim of this work is to provide up-to-date information related to those...
Journal of water process engineering, 2019
We have prepared polyethersulfone (PES) nanocomposite membranes comprising of cloisite 30B clay, SiO 2 , TiO 2 , hydroxyl-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs-OH), and carboxyl-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs-COOH). The nanoparticulate at five different concentrations were added into the polymeric dope solutions including 15 or 18 wt% of PES, N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) or 1methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as solvents, and 1 wt% of pore forming agent. These nanoparticulate may improve porosity, hydrophilicity, and open the channels up for improved water transport. Although many nanoparticulate with various properties and functionalities have been used for the same aims, the efforts have been made to choose the best nanomaterial and its loading among these five famous nanofillers for modifying PES ultrafiltration membrane. The nanocomposite membranes showed better antifouling characteristics and water permeability as compared with the pristine PES membrane because of the porosity and hydrophilicity improvements. However, further increasing nanoparticulate loading led to a possible agglomeration and diminished the water flux and fouling resistance. The effect of polymer concentration and solvent showed that membranes fabricated using 15 wt% of PES concentration possessed greater fouling resistance and water flux compared to those of fabricated using 18 wt% of PES concentration. Also, membranes fabricated using DMAc exhibited a more porous structure with considerably greater water flux as compared with those of fabricated using NMP as the solvent. Based on the results, 1 wt% of TiO 2 is recommended as the best nanoparticulate for the PES ultrafiltration membrane modification since it exhibited the superlative performance with a 320% water flux enhancement, nearly 98% BSA rejection, and 130% FRR improvement.
Journal of Membrane Science, 2017
Polymeric membranes enhanced by nanoparticles have received great attention over the past decade due to their abilities to meet the growing demand in addressing the global scarcity and pollution of water resources. Many efforts have been devoted to improve the membrane performance using this strategy, and to develop novel applications via molecular-level design for nanoparticle-polymer systems. Recent advances in applying in situ preparative techniques in polymeric membrane can potentially lead to new classes of nano-enhanced membranes for advanced water purification. Considering the increasing interest in this field related to the potential for controlling the dispersion and stability of nanoparticles, we review the progress of in situ preparative techniques for water purification. Categories of in situ preparative techniques are elaborated in detail, primarily focusing on the mechanism of the sol-gel process and in situ chemical reduction, which are considered as the most common applications of in situ preparative techniques. We also describe the effect of binding styles of nanoparticles (in situ
Nanometals-Containing Polymeric Membranes for Purification Processes
Materials
A recent trend in the field of membrane research is the incorporation of nanoparticles into polymeric membranes, which could produce synergistic effects when using different types of materials. This paper discusses the effect of the introduction of different nanometals such as silver, iron, silica, aluminum, titanium, zinc, and copper and their oxides on the permeability, selectivity, hydrophilicity, conductivity, mechanical strength, thermal stability, and antiviral and antibacterial properties of polymeric membranes. The effects of nanoparticle physicochemical properties, type, size, and concentration on a membrane’s intrinsic properties such as pore morphology, porosity, pore size, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, membrane surface charge, and roughness are discussed, and the performance of nanocomposite membranes in terms of flux permeation, contaminant rejection, and antifouling capability are reviewed. The wide range of nanocomposite membrane applications including desalination a...
Journal of Polymer Research, 2019
Influence of the dope solution concentration on final membrane properties, regarding TiO 2 role, was investigated. For this purpose, blended flat sheet poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)-based membranes with different proportions of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP)/ TiO 2 ratios were prepared via phase inversion process. The final application of the membranes was evaluated, especially in contact with vital microbial mixed liquor, in membrane bioreactors due to antibacterial properties of TiO 2 and environmentally concern of nanoparticles application. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used as a precise and multivariate technique to estimate and navigate the system performance at any experimental point within the investigation domain. Filtration properties, flux recovery ratio and (Protein flux / pure water flux: Jp/Jw) ratio of the membranes were investigated statistically to propose the formulations for the optimal performance. The correlation showed good agreement with the measured pure water flux and flux recovery ratio values of the fabricated membranes, with R 2 values higher than 90%. The findings are significant since demonstrating that the loaded nano TiO 2 particles around 0.5 wt% improve pure water flux, however, based on the Pareto analysis, experimental values and environmental safety concern, nanoparticles loading can be neglected in comparison with the other factors investigated in this study.
A Comprehensive Review of Polymeric Wastewater Purification Membranes
Journal of Composites Science, 2021
Synthetic membranes are currently employed for multiple separation applications in various industries. They may have been prepared from organic or inorganic materials. Present research majorly focuses on polymeric (i.e., organic) membranes because they show better flexibility, pore formation mechanism, and thermal and chemical stability, and demand less area for installation. Dendritic, carbon nanotube, graphene and graphene oxide, metal and metal oxide, zwitter-ionic, and zeolite-based membranes are among the most promised water treatment membranes. This paper critically reviews the ongoing developments to utilize nanocomposite membranes to purify water. Various membranes have been reported to study their resistance and fouling properties. A special focus is given towards multiple ways in which these nanocomposite membranes can be employed. Therefore, this review provides a platform to develop the awareness of current research and motivate its readers to make further progress for u...
An Overview of the Modification Strategies in Developing Antifouling Nanofiltration Membranes
Membranes
Freshwater deficiency has become a significant issue affecting many nations’ social and economic development because of the fast-growing demand for water resources. Nanofiltration (NF) is one of the promising technologies for water reclamation application, particularly in desalination, water, and wastewater treatment fields. Nevertheless, membrane fouling remains a significant concern since it can reduce the NF membrane performance and increase operating expenses. Consequently, numerous studies have focused on improving the NF membrane’s resistance to fouling. This review highlights the recent progress in NF modification strategies using three types of antifouling modifiers, i.e., nanoparticles, polymers, and composite polymer/nanoparticles. The correlation between antifouling performance and membrane properties such as hydrophilicity, surface chemistry, surface charge, and morphology are discussed. The challenges and perspectives regarding antifouling modifiers and modification str...