School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), 261 Cheomdan-gwagiro, 1 Oryong-dong, Buk-gu, Gwangju 500-712, Republic of Korea.
Water Res. 2011 Oct 15;45(16):5287-94. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2011.07.036. Epub 2011 Aug 4.
The protein fouling of membranes can be related to the hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions between proteins and the membrane material; i.e., protein fouling can be reduced by changing the membrane properties. In this study, multi-walled carbon nanotube/polyethersulfone (C/P) composite membranes were prepared via the phase inversion method in order to investigate protein fouling, with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and ovalbumin (OVA) used as the model protein for assessing the protein fouling behavior. The results show that the C/P composite membranes were fouled less compared to the bare polyethersulfone (PES) membrane at 4 h of static protein adsorption at neutral pH. Moreover, the irreversible fouling ratio of the C/P composite membranes was less than the bare PES membrane after 1 h of protein ultrafiltration, and the flux recovery ratio of the C/P composite membranes was higher than the bare PES membrane after 20 min of DI water filtration. Based on these results, C/P composite membranes were shown to have the potential to alleviate the effects of protein fouling, thereby enabling C/P composite membranes to be used for several runs of protein filtration after simple washing with water.
膜的蛋白质污染与蛋白质和膜材料之间的疏水和静电相互作用有关；也就是说，可以通过改变膜性能来减少蛋白质污染。在这项研究中，通过相转化法制备了多壁碳纳米管/聚醚砜（C/P）复合膜，以研究蛋白质污染，使用牛血清白蛋白（BSA）和卵清蛋白（OVA）作为模型蛋白来评估蛋白质污染行为。结果表明，与中性 pH 下静态蛋白质吸附 4 h 的裸聚醚砜（PES）膜相比，C/P 复合膜的污染程度较低。此外，在蛋白质超滤 1 h 后，C/P 复合膜的不可逆污染比裸 PES 膜少，在 DI 水过滤 20 min 后，C/P 复合膜的通量恢复率高于裸 PES 膜。基于这些结果，C/P 复合膜具有减轻蛋白质污染影响的潜力，从而使 C/P 复合膜在简单用水清洗后能够用于多次蛋白质过滤。
