Edokali, M., Mehrabi, M., Cespedes, O. et al. (5 more authors) (2024) Antifouling and stability enhancement of electrochemically modified reduced graphene oxide membranes for water desalination by forward osmosis. Journal of Water Process Engineering, 59. 104809. ISSN 2214-7144
Abstract
In this study, an innovative electro-oxidative technique was employed to create graphene-based forward osmosis (FO) membranes. This involved constructing Polyethyleneimine crosslinked reduced graphene oxide (PEI:rGO) layers on scalable flat-sheet substrates functionalized with polyethylene glycol-Poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene)-poly (styrenesulfonate) (P:P:P) via electrophoretic deposition. Under the optimized electric potential of 10 V, we successfully combined PEI:rGO laminates with P:P:P support layers, resulting in a highly porous structure. The double-sided coated PEI:rGO membrane (DS-PEI:rGO) exhibited superior performance compared to the single-sided PEI:rGO membrane (SS-PEI:rGO). DS-PEI:rGO showed higher ion salt rejection (95 %) than that of SS-PEI:rGO (90.1 %) but slightly lower than the commercially-available Cellulose Triacetate (CTA-FO) membrane (99.3 %) in lab-scale FO desalination process. Interestingly, the resultant DS-PEI:rGO membrane exhibited reduced specific salt flux (0.014 g/L) compared to SS-PEI:rGO and CTA-FO membrane (0.017 g/L and 2.549 g/L, respectively). The antifouling properties of PEI:rGO membranes were assessed using synthetic seawater with sodium alginate. Under a 3.0 V DC potential, both PEI:rGO membranes experienced a 30 % increase in recovered flux compared to membranes without an electric field. This improvement was attributed to electro-oxidation mechanisms between PEI:rGO and oppositely charged ions, along with the unique nanocomposite structure formed by PEI:rGO and P:P:P chains, contributing to enhanced membrane integrity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Forward osmosis desalination, Reduced graphene oxide, Electrochemistry, Membrane fouling, Structural integrity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemistry (Leeds) > Inorganic Chemistry (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Jan 2024 16:07 |
Last Modified: | 19 Feb 2024 14:50 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jwpe.2024.104809 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207445 |