Novel thin film composite (TFC) membrane with ordered polyacrylonitrile/carbon nanotubes (CNTs) hybrid nanofibers (HNF) as a support is developed for forward osmosis (FO) application in this study. Aligned warp and weft nanofibers with hybrid materials of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and oxidized carbon nanotubes are fabricated via electrospinning. The ordered-nanofiber supports is formed to promote both FO performance and mechanical properties. SEM results show that ordered-nanofibers make the pore uniform and straight, indicating low tortuosity, and the porosity reaches 80-90%. The addition of oxidized carbon nanotubes in PAN-nanofiber support promotes the hydrophilicity as well as mechanical properties. The contact angle of the HNF support is 23.1o, which is much smaller than that of pure PAN fiber supports (68.2o), showing higher hydrophilicity in the HNF support; The tensile strength of the HNF support is 57.8 MPa with elongation-at-break of 57.1%, and that of the pure PAN fiber support is 11.0 MPa with elongation-at-break of 16.3%, indicating that the CNTs promote the tension strength and ductility dramatically and overcoming the strength defects of electrospun mat. The TFC-FO membrane with hybrid fibers as the support exhibits relatively high water flux of 179 L/m2h and low reverse salt permeability of 38.1 g/m2 h in FO mode with pure water as feed solution and 1 M NaCl as draw solution, while the water flux and reverse salt flux of TFC-FO membrane with unordered pure PAN fibers as support is 85.1 L/ m2 h and 23.1 g/m2 h, respectively. The FO performance of the TFC-FO membranes with hybrid fibers as supports surpasses that of present reported TFC-FO membranes with water flux of 15-40 L/m2 h and reverse salt flux of 10-125 g/m2 h.

Synthesis of highperformance forward osmosis membrane with ordered polyacrylonitrile/carbonnanotubes hybrid nanofibers as support

248th National Meeting (2014)

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