1. School of Ecology and Environment, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China 2. Singapore Membrane Technology Centre, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637141, Singapore 3. Beijing Origin Water Membrane Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing 101407, China 4. Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Iceland, Reykjavik IS-107, Iceland
• A fine fibre (40–60 nm diameter) interlayer (~1 µm thickness) was electrospun.
• Fine fibre interlayer promoted formation of defect-free dense polyamide layer.
• FO membrane with dual-layer substrate had less organic fouling potential.
• High reverse salt flux accelerated organic fouling on FO membrane.
Nanofibre-supported forward osmosis (FO) membranes have gained popularity owing to their low structural parameters and high water flux. However, the nanofibrous membranes are less stable in long-term use, and their fouling behaviours with foulants in both feed solution (FS) and draw solution (DS) is less studied. This study developed a nanofibrous thin-film composite (TFC) FO membrane by designing a tiered dual-layer nanofibrous substrate to enhance membrane stability during long-term usage and cleaning. Various characterisation methods were used to study the effect of the electrospun nanofibre interlayer and drying time, which is the interval after removing the M-phenylenediamine (MPD) solution and before reacting with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) solution, on the intrinsic separation FO performance. The separation performance of the dual-layer nanofibrous FO membranes was examined using model foulants (sodium alginate and bovine serum albumin) in both the FS and DS. The dual-layer nanofibrous substrate was superior to the single-layer nanofibrous substrate and showed a flux of 30.2 L/m2/h (LMH) when using 1.5 mol/L NaCl against deionised (DI) water in the active layer facing draw solution (AL-DS) mode. In the fouling test, the water flux was effectively improved without sacrificing the water/solute selectivity under the condition that foulants existed in both the FS and DS. In addition, the dual-layer nanofibrous TFC FO membrane was more robust during the fouling test and cleaning.
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