Alleviation of Reverse Salt Leakage across Nanofiber Supported Thin-Film Composite Forward Osmosis Membrane via Heat-Curing in Hot Water

Electrospun nanofiber with interconnected porous structure has been studied as a promising support layer of polyamide (PA) thin-film composite (TFC) forward osmosis (FO) membrane. However, its rough surface with irregular pores is prone to the formation of a defective PA active layer after interfacial polymerization, which shows high reverse salt leakage in FO desalination. Heat-curing is beneficial for crosslinking and stabilization of the PA layer. In this work, a nanofiber-supported PA TFC membrane was conceived to be cured on a hot water surface with preserved phase interface for potential “defect repair”, which could be realized by supplementary interfacial polymerization of residual monomers during heat-curing. The resultant hot-water-curing FO membrane with a more uniform superhydrophilic and highly crosslinked PA layer exhibited much lower reverse salt flux (FO: 0.3 gMH, PRO: 0.8 gMH) than that of oven-curing FO membrane (FO: 2.3 gMH, PRO: 2.2 gMH) and achieved ∼4 times higher separation efficiency. It showed superior stability owing to mitigated reverse salt leakage and osmotic pressure loss, with its water flux decline lower than a quarter that of the oven-curing membrane. This study could provide new insight into the fine-tuning of nanofiber-supported TFC FO membrane for high-quality desalination via a proper selection of heat-curing methods.