Membrane-based water purification technologies are known for their versatility and wide applicability. However, membranes are often susceptible to physical damages, which can result in compromising the mechanical integrity and subsequently a loss of their filtration performance. Current technology to deal with damaged membranes is a replacement without a second thought. There aretwo main limitations of this approach. First, the operation must be suspended to replace a damaged membrane. Secondly, it increases the materials cost. One of the effective ways to resolve membrane damages is perhaps by utilizing a so-called self-healable membrane. Such membrane can autonomously heal the physical damages including cracks, breaches, or pinholes. In this work, we have developed self-healable membrane coatings with selective wettability of water over oil (that is, hydrophilic and oleophobic). Reverse osmosis (RO) membranes with polyamide active layers were treated with a copolymer comprised of epoxy- and cellulose-based polymers. This resulted in RO membranes with selective wettability of water over oil. Such selective wettability allowed our membranes to resist oil fouling. We demonstrated that our membranes can autonomously repair the physical damages and restore their intrinsic filtration performance such as water flux and salt rejection. We envision that our self-healable membrane coatings with selective wettability would be instrumental beyond membranes-based water treatment, including the pharmaceutical, biomedical, and food industry.

Self-healable membrane coatings with selective wettability

2019 Fall National Meeting

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