Polyethersulfone/Polyamide11Cost Effective, Antifouling- Nanofiltration Blend Membrane

Nanofiltration membranes (NF) are considered and used extensively in seawater softening, food, textile, and mining industries for the removal of di-and multi-valents to increase RO lifetime by decreasing fouling rates, and chemical cleaning intervals. In this work, blend membranes of polyethersulfone and polyamide11 were prepared by phase inversion process. The membranes were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM),pore size distribution, mechanical properties and membranes performance. The results indicated that, the membrane (N2), which was prepared using PA11 (1 wt%) with a solution of sodium dodecylsulphate (0.5wt%) and TiO2 (1 wt%) provides the best performance according to rejection percentage. Where, the rejection percentage of magnesium sulfate reached 99 %, 97% and 91% as a function of feed synthetic salt solutionof concentration 1g/l, 2 g/l, and 5 g/l respectively. Permeate flux of (N2) was the lowest one due to havinga dense top layer of this membrane and low mean pore size (7.7 nm) which was 66.7 L/m2.h, 64.2 L/m2.h and 53.5 L/m2.h as a function of feed synthetic salt solutionof concentration 1g/l, 2 g/l and 5 g/l respectively. The fouling test was carried out using methylene blue dye, where the membrane (N2) exhibits good antifouling properties.