• Membrane Journal
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.317-324
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• 2014

It is very well known that the conventional polyamide (PA) thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have excellent permselective properties, but their chlorine tolerance is not good enough. In this study, to improve such chlorine tolerance, microporous membranes containing hydrophilic functional groups such as -COOH were used as a support to prepare PA TFC RO membranes, employing the conventional interfacial polymerization method. Meta-phenylene diamine (MPD) and 2,6-diamine toluene (2,6-DAT) were used as diamine monomers and tri-mesoyl chloride (TMC) as an acid monomer. The membranes prepared were characterized using various instrumental analytical methods and permeation test set-up. The flux obtained from the membranes prepared so was more than $1.0m^3/m^2day$ at 800 psi of operating pressure, while the salt rejection was over 99.0%. The chlorine tolerance of them was also found to be better than that of the membrane prepared by using conventional polysulfone support without hydrophilic functional groups.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.120-122
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• 1998

현재 상업화되어있는 RO membrane으로는 크게 asymmetric membrane과 composite membrane으로 구분될 수 있다. Asymmetric membrane의 소재로는 Cellulose acetate나 Cellulose triacetate와 같은 것들이 사용되며 현재에도 많이 사용되고 있으나, 보다 더 우수한 성능을 갖는 분리막을 제조하기 위해 현재에는 주로 composite membrane 형태로 제조된다. 대부분의 composite membrane은 계면중합에 의해 제조되는데 대표적인 membranem으로는 FT-30이 있다. 이 밖에도 support의 표면을 직접 플라즈마 처리하여 복합막을 제조하는 공정이 있으며 polyactrylonitrile과 같은 membrane이 이에 속한다. 플라즈마 처리된 복합막은 처리 대상에 크게 영향을 받지 않고 support 표면에 crosslinking의 형태로 형성되기 때문에 active layer가 매우 안정하며 따라서 우수한 물리화학적 성질을 기대할 수 있다. 이밖에도 분리막 표면을 친수성 단량체로 플라즈마 처리함으로써 분리막 표면에 친수성을 부여하거나 관능기를 도입함으로써 불활성 표면을 활성화 시킬 수도 있는 등의 여러가지 장점을 가지고 있다.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.323-336
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• 2017

The main challenge in many applications of acetic acid is acid dehydration and its recovery from wastewater streams. Therefore, the performance of polyamide thin film composite is evaluated to separate acetic acid from water. To reach this goal, the formation of polyamide layer on polysulfone support membrane was investigated via interfacial polymerization (IP) of meta-phenylenediamine (MPD) in water with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) in hexane. Also, the effect of synthesis conditions, such as concentration of monomers and curing temperature on separation of acetic acid from water were investigated by reverse osmosis process. Moreover, the separation mechanism was discussed. The solute permeation was carried out under applied pressure of 5 bar at $25^{\circ}C$. Surface properties of TFC membrane were characterized by ATR-FTIR, SEM and AFM. The performance test indicated that 3.5 wt% of MPD, 0.35 wt% of TMC and curing temperature of $75^{\circ}C$ are the optimum conditions. Moreover, the permeate flux was $4.3{\frac{L}{m^2\;h}}$ and acetic acid rejection was about 43% at these conditions.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.182-191
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• 2002

Polyamide reverse osmosis (RO) membrane with thin film composite structure was commercialized for seawater desalination process. Recently, it has been reported that some RO processes for high pressure and recovery leads to reducing in energy cost and pretreatment scale compared with earlier process. The development of energy recovery, pumping device and RO elements with high pressure and rejection made high pressure and recovery process possible. In this study, permeation properties of commercialized seawater RO membrane were investigated under the condition of high pressure and recovery. In the RO sheet membrane test 3.5% NaCl of synthetic seawater was used. The synthetic seawater contained only sodium chloride. In the RO module test, natural seawater was used at Happo Bay, Masan city. As the results, RO membrane with high durability of pressure was better than that with high rejection of seawater for high pressure and recovery process. Seawater rejection of high concentrate tends to be improved by high pressure operation.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.169-179
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• 2012

One of the major limitations in the use of commercial aromatic polyamide thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is to maintain high performance over a long period of operation, due to the sensitivity of polyamide (PA) skin layer to oxidizing agents, such as chlorine, even at very low concentrations in feed water. This article reports surface modification of a commercial TFC RO membrane (BW30-Dow Filmtec) by covering it with a thin film of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) crosslinked with glutaraldehyde (GA) to improve its resistance to chlorine. Crosslinking reaction was carried out at 25 and $40^{\circ}C$ by using PVA 1.0 wt.% solutions at different GA/PVA mass ratio, namely 0.0022, 0.0043 and 0.013. Water swelling measurements indicated a maximum crosslinking density for PVA films prepared at $40^{\circ}C$ and GA/PVA 0.0043. ATR-FTIR and TGA analysis confirmed the reaction between GA and PVA. SEM images of the original and modified membranes were used to evaluate the surface coating. Chlorine resistance of original and modified membranes was evaluated by exposing it to an oxidant solution (NaClO 300 mg/L, NaCl 2,000 mg/L, pH 9.5) and measuring water permeability and salt rejection during more than 100 h period. The surface modification effectively was demonstrated by increasing the chlorine resistance of PA commercial membrane from 1,000 ppm.h to more than 15.000 ppm.h.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.390-400
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• 2022

Nanofiltration (NF) membranes are more popular than reverse osmosis (RO) membranes as they can be operated at much lower pressures for applications in treatment of wastewater from industries like food processing and pharmaceutical as well as municipal sewage water. The separation mechanism in case of NF membranes is based on solution diffusion as well as sieving, for which the crosslinking density of the thin film of the composite membrane is less then RO membrane. Unlike ceramic membranes, membrane fouling is one of the chronic problems that occur during the nanofiltration process in polymeric membranes. Membrane cleaning is done to get rid of reversible as well as irreversible fouling by treatment with sodium hypochlorite. Compared to polymeric membranes, ceramic membranes show higher stability against these agents. In this review different types of ceramic membrane applied wastewater treatment by NF process are discussed.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.75-82
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• 2018

Forward osmosis (FO) desalination system has been highlighted to improve the energy efficiency and drive down the carbon footprint of current reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technology. To improve the trade-off between water flux and salt rejection of thin film composite (TFC) desalination membrane, thin film nanocomposite membranes (TFN), in which nanomaterials as a filler are embeded within a polymeric matrix, are being explored to tailor the separation performance and add new functionality to membranes for water purification applications. The objective of this article is to develop a graphene nanocomposite membrane with high performance of water selective permeability (high water flux, high salt rejection, and low reverse solute diffusion) as a next-generation FO desalination membrane. For advances in fabrication of graphene oxide (GO) membranes, layer-by-layer (LBL) technique was used to control the desirable structure, alignment, and chemical functionality that can lead to ultrahigh-permeability membranes due to highly selective transport of water molecules. In this study, the GO nanocomposite membrane fabricated by LBL dip coating method showed high water flux ($J_w/{\Delta}{\pi}=2.51LMH/bar$), water selectivity ($J_w/J_s=8.3L/g$), and salt rejection (99.5%) as well as high stability in aqueous solution and under FO operation condition.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.353-362
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• 2009

A new method and equipment for measuring the zeta potential of the external surface of hollow fiber (HF) membranes is reported. An existing commercial streaming potential analyzer in conjunction with home-made test cells was used to determine the electrokinetic surface characteristics of various HF membranes. It was shown that measurements of the external surface of HF membrane using the home-made test cells designed in this study were easy and reliable. The zeta potential values were quite accurate and reproducible. By varying the physical shape of the test cells to adjust hydrodynamics inside the test cells, several upgrade versions of home-made test cells were obtained. It was shown that the zeta potential of the external surface of HF membranes was most influenced by membrane materials as well as the way of surface modification. However, the overall surface charge of tested HF membranes were much less than that of commercial polyamide thin-film-composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes due to the lack of surface functional groups. For the HF membranes with the same material, the effect of pore size on the zeta potential was not significant, implying the potential of accurate zeta potential measurements for various HF membranes. The results obtained in this study are expected to be useful for better understating of electrokinetic surface characteristics of the external surface of HF membranes.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.810-815
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• 2012

The cation exchange polymer, poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PSSA), was coated onto polyamide (PA) thin film composite reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. Then these membranes were investigated for the model foulants, bovine serum albumin (BSA), humic acid (HA), and sodium alginate (SA) to check whether there are some improvement. The contact angle of PSSA coated PA RO membrane showed $58^{\circ}$ from $78^{\circ}$, the value of PA RO membrane, which confirmed successful hydrophilization. As the operating pressure increased (2, 4, 8 atm for BSA, HA and SA 100 ppm in feed solution), the fouling phenomena was worse for both none- and PSSA-coated membranes. The fouling increased in the order of BSA>SA>HA due to the interactions between sulfonic acid in PSSA and functional groups of foulants. On the other hand more significant fouling reduction was observed in the order of HA>SA>BSA. The photographs of scanning electron microscopy showed the same trend. As a result, there was the improvement of fouling phenomena for the PSSA coated RO membranes, distinctly in the case of HA.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.170-183
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• 2021

Fouling has continued to be a problem that hinders the effectiveness of membrane properties. To solve this problem of reducing fouling effects on membrane surface properties, different and innovative types of membrane patterning has been proposed. This article reviews on the progress of patterned membranes and their separation process concerning the fouling effects of membranes. The types of separation processes that utilize the maximum effectiveness of the patterned membranes include nanofiltration (NF), reverse osmosis (RO), microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), and pervaporation (PV). Using these separation processes have shown and prove to have a major effect on reducing fouling effects, and in addition, they also add beneficial properties to the patterned membranes. Each patterned membrane and their separation processes gave notable results in threshold towards flux, salt rejections, hydrophilicity and much more, but there are also some unsolved cases to be pointed out. In this review, the effects of patterned membrane for separation processes will be discussed.