(506b) 2-Step Interfacial Polymerization of Trimesoly Chloride(TMC)/Metaphenylenediamine(MPD)-Derived Polyamide for Preparation of Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Reverse Osmosis Membranes

Water purification technology has attracted increasing attention because of water shortages and the lack of access to safe drinking water.Recently, new classes of functional materials have been applied to develop reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes with increased water permeability, high salt rejection, less fouling and excellent stability. Inorganic-organic nanocomposite membranes are quite interesting because they showed increased flux by incorporating inorganic materials as such as zeolite [1] and TiO₂ [2] without significant decrease in rejection.

         Thin film composite (TFC) PA membranes are typically prepared by interfacial polymerization (IP) of m-phenylene diamine (MPD) in aqueous phase and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) in organic phase on polysulfone ultrafiltration supports. Our strategy to enhance RO performance of TFC-PA membranes includes (a) addition of additives in organic phase [3, 6], (b) inorganic-organic nanocomposite membranes with zeolite nanoparticles [4], (c) inorganic-organic nanocomposite membranes with metal alkoxides [5], and (d) two-step interfacial polymerization.

         In this presentation, as a novel technique, two-step interfacial polymerization via spray-coating will be discussed, and, in addition, the preparation of organic/inorganic hybrid membranes will be introduced.

References:

[1] B. H. Jeong, E. M. V. Hoek, Y. Yan, A. Subramani, X. Huang, G. Hurwitz, A. K. Ghosh, A. Jawor, Interfacial polymerization of thin film nanocomposites: A new concept for reverse osmosis membranes, Journal of Membrane Science, 294 (2007) 1-7.  

[2] Lee et al., Polyamide thin-film nanofiltration membranes contaning TiO₂ nanoparticles, Desalination 219 (2008) 48.  

[3] C. Kong, M. Kanezashi, T. Yamomoto, T. Tsuru, Controlled synthesis of high performance polyamide membrane with thin dense layer for water desalination, Journal of Membrane Science, 362 (2010) 76-80.

[4] C. Kong, T. Shintani, T. Tsuru, “Pre-seeding”-assisted synthesis of high performance polyamide-zeolite nanocomposie membrane for water purification, New Journal of Chemistry, 34(2010)2101-2104.

[5] C. Kong, A. Koushima, T. Kamada, T. Shintani, M. Kanezashi, T. Yoshioka, T. Tsuru, Enhanced performance of inorganic-polyamide nanocomposite membranes prepared by metal-alkoxide-assisted interfacial polymerization, Journal of Membrane Science, 366 (2011)382-388.

[6] C. Kong, T. Shintani, T. Kamada, V. Freger, T. Tsuru, Co-solvent-mediated synthesis of thin polyamide membranes, Journal of Membrane Science, 382(2011)10-16.