Traditional water treatment membranes are normally designed and manufactured from inert polymeric materials as either size-selective or dense barriers with high selectivity. To date, for most, membrane fouling, thus flux loss, remains a major technical hurdle. In this work, crumpled graphene oxide (CGO) nanocomposites, as CGO-TiO2 and CGO-Ag, were synthesized as novel core-shell nanostructures via an aerosol route and evaluated as membrane assembly components. CGO (CGO-TiO2 or CGO-Ag) composite-based porous structures are demonstrated to operate as hydrophilic, selective and reactive membranes (photo-reactive and antibacterial, respectively). A deposited layer of CGO, cross-linked with polyallylamine (PAA) on a 20 nm pore size polyethersulfone (PES) ultrafiltration support membrane demonstrated both high water flux (152�14 to 246�11 L/m2�h), and rejection for two model contaminants, methyl orange (MO, 26% to 38%) and bovine serum albumin (BSA, 83% to 91%), as a function of CGO nanocomposite layer thickness. Further experiments demonstrate that organics (here as MO) can be effectively degraded on/through the CGO-TiO2 layer under UV irradiation. Moreover, antibacterial activity of CGO-Ag nanocomposites and membrane were evaluated via E. coli. surface viability studies (as well as Ag+ release kinetics), and were shown to effectively inhibit bacterial activity/growth on the membrane surface. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of CGO composite structures applied as membrane assemblies and highlights the material's platform potential for a truly tailored approach for next generation water treatment technologies.

Crumpled graphene oxide nanocomposites for multifunctional water treatment membrane structures

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.