Membrane distillation (MD) has been identified as a promising technology for desalinating hypersaline wastewaters that reverse osmosis fails to treat. In certain cases, these wastewaters are abundant in hydrophobic contaminants (e.g., oil). Conventional MD membranes, which are exclusively hydrophobic, cannot work with such wastewaters due to the severe fouling problem resulting from the strong and attractive hydrophobic-hydrophobic interaction. We have developed composite membranes with a hydrophobic substrate and a superhydrophilic top surface for anti-oil-fouling MD. In this presentation, we will discuss the fabrication, characterization, and MD performance of these composite membranes. By coupling the MD experimental results and force spectroscopy, we elucidate the fundamental mechanism of fouling resistance and investigate the impacts of membrane surface properties on the effectiveness and robustness of the fouling resistance. In particular, we highlight the complementary use of both the macroscale oil-probe force spectroscopy and the microscale colloidal probe force spectroscopy (based on atomic force microscopy) to study oil-membrane interaction underwater, which provides important insight insights to the understanding membrane oil fouling.

Anti-oil-fouling membranes in membrane distillation: Drivers, materials development, and force spectroscopy for mechanisms elucidation

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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