Tailoring the Permselectivity of Water Desalination Membranes via Nanoparticle Assembly

Published

January 6, 2014

Author(s)

Edwin Chan, William Mulhearn, Jung-Hyun Lee, Daeyeon Lee, Christopher Stafford

Abstract

: Thin film composite membranes can selectively separate mono- and di-valent ions from water via solution-diffusion of each species through a dense but ultrathin, highly crosslinked polymer ‘skin' layer - water is transported across the membrane faster than associated salts. Changing the selectivity of the ‘skin' layer typically requires adjusting the monomer chemistries that make up the polymer ‘skin' layer, but doing so also impacts a host of other membranes properties. Here, we employ electrostatic layer-by-layer deposition of inorganic nanoparticles to enhance the performance of an existing commercial nanofiltration membrane. We chose this approach because it is simple, robust, and does not require any change to the underlying chemistry of the thin film composite (TFC) membrane. We found that a single layer of nanoparticles was sufficient to increase the permselectivity of the membrane by nearly 50%, compared to the virgin TFC membrane. In order to understand the mechanism for permselectivity enhancement, we developed a modified solution-diffusion model to account for the additional hydraulic resistance of the nanoparticle layer, which can faithfully capture the effect of nanoparticle layer thickness on the observed water and salt flux of the modified TFC membrane.

Citation

Langmuir

Volume

30

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

membranes, permselectivity, water, salt, nanoparticles, layer-by-layer

Citation

Chan, E. , Mulhearn, W. , Lee, J. , Lee, D. and Stafford, C. (2014), Tailoring the Permselectivity of Water Desalination Membranes via Nanoparticle Assembly, Langmuir (Accessed January 30, 2026)