Graphene oxide incorporated thin-film composite membranes for forward osmosis applications

摘要

In this work, graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets are synthesized and incorporated into the polyamide (PA) selective layer to develop a novel thin-film composite (TFC) membrane for forward osmosis (FO) application. The chemical structure and morphology of the synthesized GO and GO-incorporated TFC membranes are studied by various characterization techniques. Compared with the control TFC membrane, GO-incorporated TFC membranes exhibit higher water flux and reasonable draw solute rejection. The effects of the GO loading on the membrane morphology and FO performance of the GO-incorporated TFC membranes are investigated systematically in terms of various characterizations and intrinsic separation performance. The influence of the draw solution concentration is also studied. The GO incorporated TFC membranes also possess lower fouling propensity in FO test than that without embedded GO. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.