Improved Anti-Fouling Performance of Sintered Alumina Membrane Filters Modified with Grafted-on PEG-Brush Polymer
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13052/jsame2245-4551.2016.002Keywords:
Membrane filtration, fouling, surface modification, poly(ethylene glycol)Abstract
Fouling of membrane filters is the key performance limiting factor in mem-
brane filtration. Thus fouling and anti-fouling have received much attention
in recent years, covering topics from fouling mechanisms and characteristics
to anti-fouling surface modifications. This paper presents a method to achieve
controlled grafting of an anti-fouling poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) brush poly-
mer layer onto a sintered alumina membrane filter surface without reduction
of the filter permeability. The obtained PEG layers were characterized using
a broad range of surface techniques including Fourier transformed infrared
spectroscopy, ellipsometry, atomic force microscopy, and contact angle mea-
surements. Dead-end filtration experiments with PEG-brush modified filters
showed improved fouling reversibility for the filtration of a BSA solution
and significantly slowed down the fouling rate during filtration of a lysozyme
solution. The cross-flow filtration of model lake-water demonstrated improved
foulant removal for the PEG modified filters during backflush cleaning and thereby increased the overall throughput during a filtration cycle as compared
to the bare membrane filters
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