Enhanced Hydrophilic and Antipollution Properties of PES Membrane by Anchoring SiO2/HPAN Nanomaterial

In this paper, a hydrophilic SiO2/hydrolyzed polyacylonitrile (HPAN)/polyethersulphone (PES) hybrid membrane was fabricated by blending PES with a series of SiO2/HPAN nanoparticles, which were prepared by hydrolyzing PAN and ethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) synchronously. During the phase inversion processing to fabricate the membrane, SiO2/HPAN would blend into the matrix and anchor on the surface of the membrane. By tuning the hydrolyzing time of the HPAN/SiO2 and the content of HPAN/SiO2, water flux and antifouling properties of the SiO2/HPAN/PES hybrid membrane improved significantly in the ultrafiltration process. The experiment demonstrated that, when blending with 10% content of SiO2/HPAN-1.5h, the SiO2/HPAN/PES hybrid membrane could achieve optimal performance: the water contact angle decreased to 42.08°, the water flux increased to 354 L/m2 h, the bovine serum albumin (BSA) flux increased to 144 L/m2 h, and the BSA rejection increased to 94.2%. Besides, the water flux remained at 250 L/m2 h after fouling with BSA solution, which was higher than that of the neat membrane. Interestingly, the experiment also found that the SiO2/HPAN/PES hybrid membrane remained the high performance at high temperature, and the BSA and oil flux even enhanced when the temperature increased from room temperature to 80 °C. It exhibited that the separation performance of the membrane enhanced greatly with anchoring SiO2/HPAN nanoparticles.