High-Performance Thin-Film Composite Membrane for Water Purification

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.