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Preparation of small-pore UF membranes with high porosity by modulating the size of nano-CaCO3 in a casting solution

Polymer Journal (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

High-performance ultrafiltration (UF) membranes show significant potential for high selectivity and permeation. In the present study, small-pore polyethersulfone (PES) UF membranes with narrow size distributions and high surface porosities were successfully prepared from PES casting solutions that contained nano-CaCO3 particles of different sizes and were coagulated in a HCl solution. The nano-CaCO3 particles with different sizes (22.8–6.3 nm) were produced by modulating the HCl/nano-CaCO3 molar ratio in the casting solution. The size of the nano-CaCO3 particles and the amount of CaCl2 produced synergistically affected the viscosity of the casting solution; in addition, these factors regulated the structure and performance of the PES UF membranes. The obtained membranes exhibited small pore sizes with narrow pore size distributions and high surface porosities, as well as high water flux and bovine serum albumin (BSA) rejection. The optimized membrane had a surface pore size of 9.8 nm with an FWHM of 5.5 nm and a high surface porosity of 12.8%. The membrane also exhibited a high water permeance of 737.2 L·m−2·h−1·bar−1 with a BSA rejection of 99.3%, which surpassed those reported for PES membranes in the literature. This work provided a simple and effective method for preparing high-performance UF membranes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Tianjin Major Science and Technology Program (Grant No. 22ZXSYSY00020), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (Grant No. B2023110019), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 22178268), and the Cangzhou Institute of Tiangong University (Grant No. TGCYY-F-0208).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Yujie Wu, Shenghuan Wang, Yahui Liu, Yanhong Ji & Benqiao He

  2. Cangzhou Institute of Tiangong University, Cangzhou, 061000, China

    Benqiao He

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, 25120, Pakistan

    Mohammad Younas

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  1. Yujie Wu
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Wu, Y., Wang, S., Liu, Y. et al. Preparation of small-pore UF membranes with high porosity by modulating the size of nano-CaCO3 in a casting solution. Polym J (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-024-00938-1

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