Effective desalination and anti-biofouling performance via surface immobilized MWCNTs on RO membrane

Desalination is considered a viable method to overcome the issue of water scarcity either from waste water or seawater. For this purpose, this study employed a facile approach to develop surface immobilized oxidized-MWCNTs (o-MWCNTs) onto crosslinked polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) membrane. Firstly, modified polysulphone substrate was synthesized on to which crosslinked PVA layer was spread onto it. PVA layer act as active layer for surface immobilization of o-MWCNTs in varying concentration. The functional group analysis, morphology and roughness of membranes surface was conducted out using FTIR, SEM and AFM respectively. The results showed that modified membranes, immobilized o-MWCNTs enhanced the salt rejection (Na₂SO₄) upto 99.8%. After contacting with Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus for 2.5 h the bacteria mortalities of the fabricated membrane could reach 96.9%. Furthermore, the anti-biofouling tests showed that OP-MWCNTs (1–5) modified membranes have higher anti-biofouling property than the control membrane.