Fabrication of a High Water Flux Conductive MWCNTs/PVC Composite Membrane with Effective Electrically Enhanced Antifouling Behavior

Membrane fouling is a major issue that deteriorates the performance of membrane filtration systems. The electrically assisted membrane filtration process is proven to be effective for alleviating membrane fouling. In this study, we synthesized an electrically conductive membrane by incorporating multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) into polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The synthesized membranes have larger porosity than the PVC membrane (incorporating polyethylene glycol (PEG)), and thus possess much higher water flux under the same testing conditions. The initial and stable water fluxes are 2033 L/(m2·h) and 750 L/(m2·h), respectively, which are much higher than that of the pure PVC membrane. More importantly, the membrane has higher surface charge density and excellent electrical conductivity, but the surface hydrophilicity and toughness decreased with the addition of the MWCNTs. The 25 wt % MWCNTs/PVC composite membrane possesses suitable electrical conductivity of 0.128 S/m. The same membrane shows electro-enhanced antifouling performance during the antifouling test with yeast as a model foulant because the external electric field (−2 V) impulses a strong repulsion force while producing some micro bubbles to repel the foulant; thus, the membrane fouling is suppressed. In the current study, we develop a simple method to fabricate the electrically conductive membrane for application in the electrically assisted membrane filtration process.