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

A novel graphene oxide/TiO2-polyvinylidene fluoride (GO/TiO2-PVDF) hybrid ultrafiltration membrane has been successfully developed via the phase inversion technique by supplementing with GO/TiO2 nanocomposites, in which the synergistic coupling of GO and TiO2 could result in improved photocatalytic activity and endow hybrid membranes with photocatalytic antifouling function. Compared with PVDF membranes supplemented with TiO2 and GO, respectively, the GO/TiO2-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/TiO2-PVDF membrane could recover high flux after fouling, which thus presented self-cleaning property under UV static irradiation. Besides, the GO/TiO2-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/TiO2-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.