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Abstract

For the desalination of brine and seawater, membrane distillation (MD) is a desirable treatment method. Because of their high permeability and rejection, electrospun nanofiber membranes (ENMs) are becoming more popular in (MD) applications. Due to their unique features, superhydrophobic nanofibers have garnered much attention from scientists working to perfect high-efficiency MD membranes. In this work, a completely novel double-layer design approach for superhydrophobic membranes was proposed for water desalination using Direct Contact Membrane Distillation (DCMD). A double-layer of nonwoven nanofiber membranes was created using hydrophobic polymers via an electrospinning technique. Electrospinning created a double-layer membrane of nonwoven nanofibers utilizing hydrophobic polymers PVDF: PMMA. In this work, different ratios of silica (SiO2) nanoparticles have been added at different weight percentages (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5,3, 3.5, and 4wt. %) within the second (top) layer, which is the PMMA/DMF. All fabricated membranes were characterized using contact angle (CA), Tensile Strength (TS), Atomic force microscopy (AFM), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). In addition, the porosity and Liquid Enter Pressure (LEP) were calculated for each membrane. Embedding 3.5 wt% SiO2 nanoparticles within the nanfibers resulted in the highest contact angle of 153º and tensile strength of 10 N. The high hydrophobicity increased the repellent water on the nanofibers membrane and prevented the nanofibers membrane from being wet. The DCMD findings showed that the membrane's salt rejection was higher than 99.99 % with a water flux of 43.997 kg/m2.hr and a permeate conductivity below 20.51μS/cm under the best-specified conditions (70 g/L, 0.6 L/min, and 55°C).

Keywords

Desalination, Electrospinning, Hydrophobic polymer, Nonwoven Nanofibers, Superhydrophobic, Silica nanoparticles.

Subject Area

Chemistry

Article Type

Article

First Page

2158

Last Page

2172

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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