Alotaibi Abdullah A, Shukla Arun Kumar, Mrad Mohamed Habib, Alswieleh Abdullah M, Alotaibi Khalid M
Department of Chemistry, College of Sciences and Humanities, Shaqra University, Ad-Dawadmi 11911, Saudi Arabia.
King Abdullah Institute for Nanotechnology, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
Membranes (Basel). 2021 Nov 26;11(12):935. doi: 10.3390/membranes11120935.
Membranes are an efficient way to treat emulsified heavy metal-based wastewater, but they generally come with a trade-off between permeability and selectivity. In this research, the amine and sulphonic groups on the inner and outer surface of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) were first modified by a chemical approach. Then, MSNs with amine and sulphonic groups were utilized as new inorganic nanofiller to fabricate mixed matrix polysulfone (PSU) nanocomposite membranes using the classical phase inversion approach. The resultant nanoparticles and membranes were characterized by their physico-chemical characteristics as well as determination of pure water permeability along with cadmium and zinc ion removal. Embedding nanoparticles resulted in a significant rise in the water permeability as a result of changes in the surface properties and porosity of the membrane. Furthermore, the efficiency of developed membranes to remove cadmium and zinc was significantly improved by more than 90% due to the presence of functional groups on nanoparticles. The functionalized-MSNs/PSU nanocomposite membrane has the potential to be an effective industrial effluent removal membrane.
膜是处理乳化重金属废水的有效方法，但通常在渗透性和选择性之间存在权衡。在本研究中，首先通过化学方法对介孔二氧化硅纳米颗粒（MSNs）内外表面的胺基和磺酸基进行改性。然后，将具有胺基和磺酸基的MSNs用作新型无机纳米填料，采用经典相转化法制备混合基质聚砜（PSU）纳米复合膜。通过其物理化学特性以及测定纯水渗透率和镉、锌离子去除率对所得纳米颗粒和膜进行表征。由于膜的表面性质和孔隙率的变化，嵌入纳米颗粒导致水渗透率显著提高。此外，由于纳米颗粒上存在官能团，所制备的膜去除镉和锌的效率显著提高了90%以上。功能化MSNs/PSU纳米复合膜有潜力成为一种有效的工业废水去除膜。
