A review of the physical mixing method to prevent fouling in polymer membranes
Subject Areas :Amir Kholghi 1 , Morteza Nasiri 2
1 - Sahand University of Technology - Faculty of Polymer
2 -
Keywords: Phase separation, Fouling, Anti-fouling materials, Physical mixing,
Abstract :
Membrane technology is an essential tool for purification and separation of liquid, solid and gas solutions, which is used in a wide range of industrial and medical applications. Despite being widely used in these fields, polymer-based membranes still face several challenges, including instability, low mechanical strength, and tendency to fouling. The last point has attracted the attention of many research groups around the world. A convenient method for preparing antifouling membranes is through physical mixing, which is a one-step method that involves mixing the base polymer and antifouling materials before casting and forming a film by a phase separation process. This review focuses on the recent development of anti-fouling membranes through this method and initially deals with different phase separation processes including non-solvent induced phase separation, vapor induced phase separation, temperature induced phase separation evaporation induced phase separation. In this study, the application of polymer anti-fouling materials such as nanocellulose, hydrophilic polymers, sulfonated polymers, amphiphilic block copolymers, etc., to achieve anti-fouling properties and improve the performance of the resulting membranes from the point of view of pure water flux, rejection percentage and flux recovery rate are investigated. The results of this study show that physical mixing with appropriate antifouling materials is an effective method to reduce the amount of fouling and improve the performance of membranes.
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