Enhanced Hydrophilic and Antipollution Properties of PES Membrane by Anchoring SiO2/HPAN Nanomaterial

In this paper, a hydrophilic SiO2/hydrolyzed polyacylonitrile (HPAN)/polyethersulphone (PES) hybrid membrane was fabricated by blending PES with a series of SiO2/HPAN nanoparticles, which were prepared by hydrolyzing PAN and ethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) synchronously. During the phase inversion processing to fabricate the membrane, SiO2/HPAN would blend into the matrix and anchor on the surface of the membrane. By tuning the hydrolyzing time of the HPAN/SiO2 and the content of HPAN/SiO2, water flux and antifouling properties of the SiO2/HPAN/PES hybrid membrane improved significantly in the ultrafiltration process. The experiment demonstrated that, when blending with 10% content of SiO2/HPAN-1.5h, the SiO2/HPAN/PES hybrid membrane could achieve optimal performance: the water contact angle decreased to 42.08 degrees, the water flux increased to 354 L/m(2) h, the bovine serum albumin (BSA) flux increased to 144 L/m(2) h, and the BSA rejection increased to 94.2%. Besides, the water flux remained at 250 L/m(2) h after fouling with BSA solution, which was higher than that of the neat membrane. Interestingly, the experiment also found that the SiO2/HPAN/PES hybrid membrane remained the high performance at high temperature, and the BSA and oil flux even enhanced when the temperature increased from room temperature to 80 degrees C. It exhibited that the separation performance of the membrane enhanced greatly with anchoring SiO2/HPAN nanoparticles.