Thin-Film Composite Membrane with Porous Interlayer Composed of Dendritic Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Enhanced Nanofiltration

Abstract

Positively charged nanofiltration (NF) membranes show great potential in the fields of water treatment and resource recovery. However, this kind of NF membrane usually suffers from relatively low water permeance. Herein, a positively charged NF membrane with a porous interlayer is developed, where the interlayer is formed by assembling dendritic mesoporous silica nanoparticles (DMSNs) after the formation of a polyamide layer. This post-assembly strategy avoids the adverse effect of the interlayer on the formation of positively charged NF membranes. The porous DMSN interlayer provides abundant connected channels for water transport, thus endowing the NF membrane with enhanced water permeance. A series of DMSNs with different sizes was synthesized, and their influence on membrane formation and membrane performance was systematically investigated. The optimized membrane exhibits a CaCl2 rejection rate of 95.2% and a water flux of 133.6 L·h−1·m−2, which is 1.6 times that of the control group without an interlayer. This work represents an approach to the fabrication of a positively charged NF membrane with porous interlayers for high-efficiency cation rejection.