Synthesis of Polymeric Nanocomposite Membranes to Mitigate Biofouling in High pressure Membrane Filtration Systems

Abstract

Biofouling is an inevitable phenomenon in membranes during water treatment processes and it is important to remove biofouling so that membranes can be saved from degradation during longer run operations. The biofouling occurs due to growth of microorganisms on the surface of membranes that results in blocking of pores causing decline in flux and separation of membranes. Therefore, it is important to remove from the surfaces to save them from degradation and enhancing. their performance. Several approaches were practiced enhancing the physiochemical properties of membranes like fabrication of composite membranes that can provide properties of two materials which are compatible to each other. This approach improves the performance of membranes dramatically, but it still did not completely address the biofouling removal issue. So, it is necessary to develop such materials that are resistant to fouling and kills microorganisms on the surfaceso that they cannot grow anymore and can be removed by performing simple cleaning steps. However, developing membranes that have antibacterial properties was a challenge which was resolved by adding nanomaterials in the composite membranes. Therefore, it was necessary to develop materials that had antibacterial properties and also compatible to the polymers. So, cuprous oxide nanoparticles that had antibacterial properties and thus have a good bonding with PVA polymer was tried to make dense selective layer on a PSF micro-porous support. Hence, the fabricated membranes were used to measure flux and salt rejection properties. This study explains the synthesis and characterization of cuprous oxide nanoparticleswith various shapes and sizes and then incorporated into PVA nanocomposite membranes to impact the performance of these membranes. Design of experiments were made to study the different reaction conditions impacting the size of NPs. The results shows that the NPs were successfully prepared of spherical and cubical shape having a hydrodynamic size of 180 ± 10 nm and 680 ± 20 nm, respectively with positive surface charge.