Photocatalytic antifouling PVDF ultrafiltration membranes based on synergy of graphene oxide and TiO2 for water treatment

Abstract A novel graphene oxide/TiO 2 -polyvinylidene fluoride (GO/TiO 2 -PVDF) hybrid ultrafiltration membrane has been successfully developed via the phase inversion technique by supplementing with GO/TiO 2 nanocomposites, in which the synergistic coupling of GO and TiO 2 could result in improved photocatalytic activity and endow hybrid membranes with photocatalytic antifouling function. Compared with PVDF membranes supplemented with TiO 2 and GO, respectively, the GO/TiO 2 -PVDF membrane displayed significantly improved photodegradation efficiency (improved about 50–70%) and superior photodegradation kinetics (1.0–1.5 times faster) toward bovine serum albumin (BSA). Moreover, flux performance and flux recovery ratio of membranes revealed that the GO/TiO 2 -PVDF membrane could recover high flux after fouling, which thus presented self-cleaning property under UV static irradiation. Besides, the GO/TiO 2 -PVDF membrane showed a water flux up to 487.8 L m −2  h −1 , more than 2 times that of the pristine PVDF membrane, while keeping high BSA rejection (92.5%). Therefore, the GO/TiO 2 -PVDF membrane would have good potential in water treatment due to its high-performance multifunctional characters, i.e. separation, photocatalytic oxidation and self-cleaning, etc.