Hydrophobic
membranes are very susceptible to pore wetting when
they contact the feed water containing surfactants or low-surface-tension
liquids in membrane distillation (MD). Avoiding direct contact between
feed water and hydrophobic membrane pores is a potential strategy
to control membrane pore wetting. In this study, we successfully fabricated
a polyamide thin-film composite (TFC) Janus membrane through interfacial
polymerization, with a hydrophobic microporous membrane as the substrate.
The fabricated TFC Janus membrane showed a super antiwetting ability
when treating the hypersaline water containing surfactants (>0.4
mM
sodium dodecyl sulfate) or ethanol (>40% v/v). The optical coherence
tomography (OCT) observation revealed that no liquid water was present
at the distillate-facing side of the polyamide layer. Therefore, we
ascribed the super antiwetting ability to the fact that the polyamide
layer could prevent the feed liquid from directly contacting hydrophobic
pores. The TFC Janus membrane could also avoid the wetting induced
by gypsum scaling because the polyamide layer could act as a barrier
to hinder the intrusion of gypsum crystals into hydrophobic pores.
In addition to the antiwetting ability, the TFC Janus membrane showed
10–20% increases in vapor flux, despite the existence of a
dense polyamide layer. Because interfacial polymerization is the most
commonly used method for the fabrication of commercial TFC membranes,
this study provides a facile and scalable method to fabricate membranes
with robust antiwetting ability.
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