Perspectives on Surface Functionalization of Polymeric Membranes with Metal and Metal-Oxide Nanoparticles for Water/Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Membrane filtration technology has been extensively applied in water/wastewater treatment to help address the issue of water shortage, in which polymeric membranes are most commonly used. However, the hydrophobic nature of polymeric membranes would contribute to membrane damage caused by accumulation of organic/inorganic fouling during filtration processes. The strategy of membrane surface functionalization with nanoparticles (NPs) has been investigated and utilized to effectively improve membrane performance. Herein, recent research efforts on surface functionalization of polymeric membranes with a variety of NPs for water/wastewater treatment were concisely reviewed, focusing on metal and metal-oxide NPs. Methods for the immobilization of NPs on membrane surface and their influences on membrane properties and performances were overviewed. Results and contributions achieved in the improvement of membrane performances through surface functionalization with NPs were summarized, and emphasis was given to membrane hydrophilicity, stability, as well as antifouling and antibacterial property. Furthermore, perspectives on the current challenges and future research needs in the development and application of surface functionalized polymeric membranes were discussed.

Multifunctional PVDF Membrane Coated with ZnO-Ag Nanocomposites for Wastewater Treatment and Fouling Mitigation: Factorial and Mechanism Analyses

“…Membrane modification with nano materials has been extensively studied to mitigate membrane fouling and increase permeate flux (Li et al, 2013;Sri Abirami Saraswathiet et al, 2019;Li et al, 2022). Recently, loading hydrophilic nanocomposites decorated by silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) was proposed to simultaneously improve membrane hydrophilicity and antibacterial performance, such as silver/multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs-Ag), silver/graphene oxide (GO-Ag), SiO2-Ag, TiO2-Ag, and ZnO-Ag nanocomposites (Ahsani et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2020a;Huang et al, 2020b;Abdel-Karim et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2022b). Among these nanocomposites, ZnO-Ag nanocomposites have been considered as a promising candidate since they not only have hydrophilic and antibacterial properties, but also exhibit photocatalytic activity under both UV and visible light (Wang et al, 2016).…”