Journal article
Click poly(ethylene glycol) multilayers on RO membranes: Fouling reduction and membrane characterization
C Wang, GK Such, A Widjaya, H Lomas, G Stevens, F Caruso, SE Kentish
Journal of Membrane Science | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | Published : 2012
Abstract
Membrane fouling is one of the most important challenges in reverse osmosis operation. In this study, low-fouling, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) acrylate multilayers were assembled via the layer-by-layer technique on a commercial polyamide reverse osmosis membrane and stabilized using click chemistry. Resistance to fouling of the membrane surface with a model biopolymer increased as the number of PEG bilayers was increased. This trend was consistent with the measured surface contact angles of the membranes and with scanning electron microscopy images before and after fouling experiments. Importantly, the flux through unfouled membranes fell only marginally (9-17%) due to the presence of the mu..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Jiangsu Government Scholarship for Overseas Studies (JS-2007-134), the ARC Discovery Project and Federation Fellowship Schemes, and supported by the Particulate Fluids Processing Centre, a Special Research Centre of the ARC. The authors would like to thank Mr. Roger Curtain (Bio21 EM) for SEM imaging; Dr. Xiaofei Alex Duan (Department of Chemistry, University of Melbourne) for XPS analysis; Dr. M. Hemayet Uddin and Dr. Rico Tabor for AFM analysis. HL is the recipient of a John Stocker Postdoctoral Fellowship from the CSIRO Science and Industry Research Fund.