From ultrafiltration to nanofiltration: Nanofiltration membrane fabricated by a combined process of chemical crosslinking and thermal annealing

Abstract An integrally skinned dense ultrafiltration (UF) membrane was prepared using partially di-quaternized poly(sulfone- co -ethernitrile) random copolymer (PSF- co -DQAPEN) via classical nonsolvent induced phase inversion process (NIPS). Then the original UF membrane was molecularly restructured through a combined process of chemical quaternization-crosslinking reaction and thermal annealing for the preparation of a crosslinked nanofiltration (NF) membrane, in which p -xylylene dichloride (PXDC) and isopropanol were employed as crosslinking agent and nonsolvent treating medium, respectively. The influence of reaction time and crosslinker concentration on membrane performance were investigated. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of membrane surface and solubility test of membrane were employed to study the chemical composition and crosslinking properties of membranes, and those results revealed that the original membrane had been successfully crosslinked after this post treatment process. The separation performance of membrane was ultimately changed from UF-level to NF-level after the quaternization-crosslinking reaction and thermal annealing treatment process. The optimum crosslinked NF membrane possessed MgCl 2 rejection of 98.2% and water permeate flux of 4.12 L m −2  h −1  bar −1 . Moreover, owning to the excellent chemical stability of membrane material, the crosslinked membrane had outstanding resistance to chlorine, acid and base, thus it can be used for water softening and removing of positive dyes. Given the convenience and feasibility of this modification method, integrally skinned NF membrane could be easily fabricated via the post chemical crosslinking and thermal annealing process of UF membrane using proper treating approaches.