Performance evaluation of chitin as a nanofiller for reverse osmosis membrane development

Abstract

The concept of application of nanofiller in membrane development promises to be a sustainable pathway to enhance the membrane properties and improves the membrane performance in desalination process. In this study, polyamide thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membrane with the polysulfone support incorporated with chitin nanofibers (ChNFs) has been fabricated. The resultant TFN membrane was characterized using FESEM, Zeta potential, FTIR, contact angle equipment and used for desalination application. The desalination performance was evaluated using dead end filtration module. The introduction of ChNFs improved the formation of finger-like structure and enhanced the overall hydrophilicity of the membrane. The contact angle of the pristine membrane is 70.40 while that of ChNFs/TFN was 60.20. The flux of the neat and ChNFs/TFN membranes are 0.83 L/m2 h and 1.95 L/m2 h, respectively. The fabricated membrane displayed significantly enhanced water flux and the salt rejection was not compromised. Flux improvement of 135% was attained using 0.1 wt% ChNFs nanoparticle.