Exploring a combination of unconventional monomers for fabricating a hyper-cross-linked polyamide membrane with anti-fouling properties for production of clean water

A new hyper-cross-linked polyamide TFC NF membrane (M-I) was fabricated by using tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) and terephthaloyl chloride (TPC). Fabricated membrane M-I was treated with 15 % hydrofluoric acid (HF) and membrane was regarded as M-2. Both membranes were thoroughly characterized by FESEM, ATR-FTIR, EDX analysis, Elemental mapping, and water contact angle (WCA). Performance of both membranes was evaluated in the form of permeate flux and rejection of Eriochrome Black T (EBT) along with salts (Na₂SO₄, MgSO₄, MgCl₂, NaCl and CaCl₂) while anti-organic and antibiofouling performance of both of the membranes was studied by using Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) as a model foulant while Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus as model gram-negative and gram-positive bacterial strains. The membrane M-II showed better performance compared to the membrane M-I. The membrane M-II showed a permeate flux of 88.57 LMH at 24 bar with rejection of > 99 % of EBT and > 81 % of NaCl. The membrane M-II showed a decline in flux of merely 2.7 % with a flux recovery of 98.6 %. The bacteriostatic experiments demonstrated that the membrane M-II inhibited E. coli and S. aureus growth by 22.8 % and 77.5 %, respectively, after 24 h of incubation.