Evaluating the anti-fouling property of the hydrophilically modified porous PTFE membrane

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe flat sheet PTFE membrane was modified into hydrophilicity via deposition of fluorinated cationic surfactant. The anti-fouling property of the membranes was investigated using lysozyme (LYS) and humic acid (HA) as typical foulants and further evaluated by Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (XDLVO) theory. The results indicated that the wettability of the PTFE membrane can be manipulated by concentration of surfactant solution, and the super hydrophilic membrane with water contact angle of 2.1° was obtained with 0.8 wt% of surfactant solution. The super hydrophilic PTFE membrane showed highest cleaning efficiency of 62.5% and better anti-fouling property. XDLVO analysis further suggested that the super hydrophilic PTFE membrane had the strong repulsion force to HA and LYS and displayed better anti-fouling property due to the highest positive total interaction energy (ΔG TOT ) value. Linearly fitting on membrane practical fouling process and XDLVO results proved the consistency of the XDLVO theory with the practical anti-fouling process. 0 0 0 W W J J J J J J

Enhancement of Flux Performance in PTFE Membranes for Direct Contact Membrane Distillation

“…In this regard, this work focused on producing a novel PTFE-PVA (polytetrafluoroethylene-polyvinyl alcohol) hydrophobic membrane with hydrophilic moieties to enhance water permeability while maintaining desirable salt rejection levels. Recently, successful hydrophilic coating of PTFE has been undertaken by Zhao et al 2019 [33], Li et al 2019 [34], and Villabos-Garcia et al 2018 [35], but also in the past by Song et al 2017 [36], Park et al 2015 [37], Mansouri et al 1999 [38], and Prasad et al 1987 [39], focusing, however, on different membrane applications. Although PTFE is a difficult polymer to work with and has little compatibility with other polymers, PVA from previous studies has worked satisfactorily with PTFE electrospun membranes [40][41][42][43][44].…”