A novel approach to bind graphene oxide to polyamide for making high performance Reverse Osmosis membrane

We report the novel thin film composite RO membrane modified by graphene oxide. The thin film composite RO membrane was exposed to 2000 mg/l sodium hypochloride; thereafter it was subjected to different graphene oxide concentration ranging from 50 mg/l to 1000 mg/l in water. The resultant membrane was crosslinked with 5000 mg/l N-hydroxysuccinimide. The performance of different membranes were analysed by solute rejection and water-flux measurement. It was found that 100 mg/l graphene oxide exposure followed by 5000 mg/l N-hydroxysuccinimide treatment resulted in the membrane with the highest solute rejection of 97.78% and water-flux of 4.64 Liter per sqm per hour per bar g. The membranes were characterized by contact angle for hydrophilicity, scanning electron micrographs for surface morphology, energy dispersive X-Ray for chemical composition of the surface, Atomic force microscope for surface roughness, ATR-FTIR for chemical structure identification. It was found that the graphene oxide modified membrane increases the salt rejection performance after exposure to high-fouling water containing albumin. Highly hydrophilic, antifouling surface formation with the nanomaterial led to the improved membrane performance. Moreover, the protocol of incorporating nanomaterial by this post-treatment is simple and can be applied to any RO membrane after it is manufactured.