Ravi Kiran Das

We report the novel thin film composite RO membrane modified by graphene oxide. The thin film composite RO membrane was exposed to 2000 mg/l sodium hypochloride; thereafter it was subjected to different graphene oxide concentration ranging from 50 mg/l to 1000 mg/l in water. The resultant membrane was crosslinked with 5000 mg/l N-hydroxysuccinimide. The performance of different membranes were analysed by solute rejection and water-flux measurement. It was found that 100 mg/l graphene oxide exposure followed by 5000 mg/l N-hydroxysuccinimide treatment resulted in the membrane with the highest solute rejection of 97.78% and water-flux of 4.64 Liter per sqm per hour per bar g. The membranes were characterized by contact angle for hydrophilicity, scanning electron micrographs for surface morphology, energy dispersive X-Ray for chemical composition of the surface, Atomic force microscope for surface roughness, ATR-FTIR for chemical structure identification. It was found that the graphene oxide modified membrane increases the salt rejection performance after exposure to high-fouling water containing albumin. Highly hydrophilic, antifouling surface formation with the nanomaterial led to the improved membrane performance. Moreover, the protocol of incorporating nanomaterial by this post-treatment is simple and can be applied to any RO membrane after it is manufactured.