(609d) Ultrasonicated in Situ Growth of Ag-MOF in Polyamide Selective Layer of Thin Film Nanocomposite Membranes: Fabrication, Characterization, and Performance

Thin-film composite (TFC) membranes consisting of a polyamide (PA) selective layer made by interfacial polymerization (IP) on a support layer have become a trending research area to synthesize a commercialized water treatment and desalination membrane. Functionalization of PA selective layer for enhanced permeability, selectivity, and antifouling using additive incorporation is a promoting method to achieve this goal by tuning the morphological and physicochemical properties of the PA layer. Incorporating nanomaterials into the PA selective layer provides additional degrees of freedom to tune the material properties and enhance the separation performance. Metal−organic frameworks (MOFs) are a new type of hybrid material with a synergistic combination of inorganic metal ions and organic ligands as linkers. MOFs’ highly porous structure and tunable chemical functionalities make them promising candidate materials for functionalization of TFC membrane. Although the addition of MOF into the PA layer has been reported in the literature, however in most of the reported data, already-prepared MOF particles were added into the PA layer. In this study, we report the in situ synthesis and growth of MOF via ultrasonication method on the support layer and fabrication of PA layer in the presence of MOF. (i) The formation and characterization of Ag-MOF on the support layer and (ii) the effect of Ag-MOF on the formation of the PA layer during the IP process regarding the transport of trimesoyl chloride (TMC) and piperazine are discussed. The PA selective layer characteristics, including the degree of cross-linking, surface roughness and morphology, are studied and benched marked with a PA layer incorporated with already-prepared Ag-MOF and bare thin film composite (TFC) membrane. In addition, the performance (water permeability, selectivity and antifouling) of in situ-synthesized-Ag MOF are also compared with already-prepared Ag-MOF-membrane and bare TFC membrane.