Fouling Resistant Ultrafiltration Membranes: Effect of Additive Polymer Architecture

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1437772AsatekinFouling Resistant Ultrafiltration Membranes: Effect of Additive Polymer ArchitectureThis project will be focused on understanding how the fouling resistance of ultrafiltration membranes is affected by complex feed waters, for example in wastewater treatment. The project team will leverage this knowledge to design and test membranes for wastewater treatment that resist fouling in environments with high fouling potential, such as simulated municipal and industrial wastewater. This project will introduce novel fouling resistant ultrafiltration membranes and provide insights into how they behave in the presence of complex feeds, specifically demanding water streams such as municipal wastewater, littoral seawater, and fracking and produced water. These results will enable more efficient separations in biopharmaceutical, food and beverage industries, and lead to new approaches to bio-fouling prevention in biomedical devices and marine vessels. Graduate and undergraduate students will be involved in this research and they will gain interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, and disseminate the work through publications and presentations.This project aims to understand how the fouling resistance of ultrafiltration membranes with zwitterionic copolymer additives is affected by complex feeds found in domestic and industrial wastewater treatment, and by the chemical structure and architecture of the zwitterionic additive. It also aims to clarify the fouling resistance mechanisms of zwitterions with different foulants using a combination of filtration and interaction force measurements. This project will focus on ultrafiltration membranes manufactured using non-solvent induced phase separation by blending an amphiphilic zwitterionic copolymer into the casting solution. The project is not only to study the fouling properties of zwitterion-containing membranes, but also to gain a fundamental understanding of the fouling resistance mechanism using surface analysis, interaction force measurements, and physicochemical data. Previous research suggests that zwitterionic surface functionalities impart fouling resistance to filtration membranes, and zwitterion-containing additives in ultrafiltration membrane casting mixtures improve membrane flux. But there is a significant knowledge gap in understanding the fouling resistance of membranes containing different chemical structures and configurations of zwitterionic groups, and how fouling of this class of membranes is affected by feed composition. Hence, this research is potentially transformative for membrane manufacturers and users in wastewater treatment, seawater pretreatment for desalination, and biotech applications.