Mohamad Z., Shafie H., Ahmad A., 2017, ZnO Nanoparticles Embedded in PES-LiCl-PVA Polymeric Matrix for Synthesis of Nanocomposite Hollow Fibre Membranes, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 56, 907-912.
It is suggested that hollow fibre (HF) membranes with enhanced flux and rejection performance could be synthesised by adding zinc oxide nano particles (ZnO-NP) stabilised sterically with polyvinyl alcohol-lithium chloride (PVA-LiCl) mix into the dope solutions. Nanocomposite HF membranes made up of polyethersulfone (PES) and N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) as the base components were spun out. For this study, the effect of ZnO-NP concentrations was looked into. The HF membranes were characterised using SEM and contact angle goniometry, and the performance in terms of water flux and humic acid (HA) rejection were analysed. Experimental result suggests that the ZnO-NP embedded is able to improve the water flux and HA rejection ascompared to the pristine counterpart, with maximum water flux of 42.18 kg/m2.h and HA rejection of 94.43 % when mixed at 1 and 2 wt% of ZnO-NP. In conclusion, new blends of nanocomposite HF membranes with improved flux and rejection performance were successfully formulated and synthesised.
