ABSTRACT
The main characteristics affected by the nanoadditives either positively or negatively include hydrophilicity, fouling, porosity, permeability, roughness, and certain mechanical properties. In addition, Yin et al. concluded that the high hydrophilicity and negative charge of tax file number membranes introduced by MCM-41 nanoparticles could improve the membranes' resistance to fouling. By increasing the concentration of NPs, hydrophilicity, roughness, and zeta potential increased. Yin et al. found the same effect for silica NPs, where the permeate water flux increased from 28.5 1.0 to 46.6 1.1 LMH with the incorporation of MCM-41 NPs, while maintaining high rejections of NaCl and Na2SO4. The irreversibly bound layer of superhydrophilic silica NPs endowed the membranes with strong antifouling performance as demonstrated by three sequential fouling filtration runs. It is reported that distinct improvements on the performance of membranes, including salts separation, flux and antifouling properties are achieved.
