Abstract:
Urbanization, an unanticipated rise in population, an improvement in daily comfort, and
climate change needs have raised the demand for clean drinking water. Water shortages
have occurred throughout the past ten years. These worries, combined with the need for
practical water treatment, must grow with the demand for fresh water. To overcome this
challenge, technologies with high operating efficiency and low operating expenses are
required, and a variety of alternatives are being researched. One of the best among the
available technologies is membrane de-salination. The project's objective is to create a
metal-organic framework (MOF) based thin-film, interlayer nanocomposite membranes
for seawater desalination. Due to their evident benefits of having a high surface area and
adaptability to several applications, MOFs were chosen. The creation of thin-film,
interlayer nanocomposite membranes (TFNi) based on UiO66/UiO66-SO3H is the focus
of this thesis to increase membranes' effectiveness and stability. UiO66 is a widely
utilized metal-organic framework because of its strong chemical stability and hydrophilic
properties. Because of their excellent levels of chemical and thermal stability and
hydrophilicity, UiO66/UiO66- SO3H nanoparticles were selected and synthesized for this
study. The fabrication of UiO66/UiO66-SO3H membranes was done using PAN as a
substrate. A variety of characterization methods were employed to verify the
effectiveness and purity of nanoparticles and membranes. A dead-end nanofiltration cell
was used to assess the performance of the membranes. This showed that the formulation
of an interlayer increased the salt rejection up to nearly 30.35% for NaCl and nearly 53.93%
for MgSO4, respectively. It also increased the membrane's flow recovery ratio whereas
irreversible was reduced to a value that can be neglected. It thus can be said that the formation of
an interlayer helped in the development of a thin uniform active layer which increased the
membrane performance immensely and that a simple modification in the morphology of the
membranes can affect the membrane performance greatly.
