Robust outer-selective thin-film composite polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes with low reverse salt flux for renewable salinity-gradient energy generation
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ArticleKAUST Department
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)Date
2016-01-08Online Publication Date
2016-01-08Print Publication Date
2016-05Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/593276
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This study reports outer-selective thin-film composite (TFC) hollow fiber membranes with extremely low reverse salt fluxes and robustness for harvesting salinity-gradient energy from pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) processes. Almost defect-free polyamide layers with impressive low salt permeabilities were synthesized on top of robust polyethersulfone porous supports. The newly developed TFC-II membrane shows a maximum power density of 7.81 W m−2 using 1 M NaCl and DI water as feeds at 20 bar. Reproducible data obtained in the 2nd and 3rd runs confirm its stability under high hydraulic pressure differences. Comparing to other PRO membranes reported in the literature, the newly developed membrane exhibits not only the smallest slope between water flux decline and ΔPΔP increase but also the lowest ratio of reverse salt flux to water flux. Thus, the effective osmotic driving force could be well maintained even under high pressure operations. For the first time, the effect of feed pressure buildup induced by feed flowrate was evaluated towards PRO performance. A slight increment in feed pressure buildup was found to be beneficial to water flux and power density up to 10.06 W m−2 without comprising the reverse salt flux. We believe this study may open up new perspectives on outer-selective PRO hollow fiber membranes and provide useful insights to understand and design next-generation outer-selective TFC hollow fiber membranes for osmotic power generation.Citation
Robust outer-selective thin-film composite polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes with low reverse salt flux for renewable salinity-gradient energy generation 2016 Journal of Membrane SciencePublisher
Elsevier BVJournal
Journal of Membrane ScienceAdditional Links
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0376738815304129ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.memsci.2015.12.060