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Nanovehicle-assisted monomer shuttling enables highly permeable and selective nanofiltration membranes for water purification

Nature Water volume 1, pages 281–290 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fabricating nanofiltration membranes with high water permeance and selectivity is crucial to efficient water purification. However, achieving such a goal with a simple and cost-effective approach that is compatible with existing membrane manufacturing infrastructure remains a substantial technical challenge. Here we show a strategy of nanoemulsion-regulated interfacial polymerization (NERIP) based on nanovehicle-assisted monomer shuttling for fabricating highly permeable and selective nanofiltration membranes. In NERIP, the nanovehicles, which are surfactant-stabilized oil droplets (in water) enriched with piperazine (PIP), enter and merge into the hexane phase to initiate the polymerization between PIP and trimesoyl chloride. This nanovehicle-assisted monomer shuttling results in the formation of polyamide ‘bubbles’ that later collapse into nanocraters. The nanocrater structure substantially increases the surface area and void fraction of the polyamide layer. The PIP shuttling also accelerates the polymerization reaction, enabling the formation of a thin and highly cross-linked polyamide layer with a more uniform pore size distribution. These structural superiorities yield an unprecedentedly high performance with a water permeance of 36.8 ± 1.9 l m−2 h−1 bar−1 and a Na2SO4 rejection of 99.6 ± 0.1%. NERIP creates a new dimension to fabricate highly permeable and selective nanofiltration membranes for desalination and water purification.

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Fig. 1: PA NF membrane fabrication based on NERIP.
Fig. 2: Formation and property of nanovehicles prepared by PIP, oil and SDS.
Fig. 3: Nanocrater-like structure on PA layers resulting from nanovehicle-assisted monomer shuttling.
Fig. 4: Characterization of CIP and NERIP membranes.
Fig. 5: Water purification performance of PA NF membranes.

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Data availability

All relevant data that support the findings of this study are presented in the Article and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper. The source data can also be accessed through the figshare repository and are freely available for download.

Code availability

The codes for the MD simulation performed are provided with this paper. The initial configuration for the mixture box of MD simulation was built from the PACKMOL package. GROMACS was used to input files of GROMACS package of MD simulation including EM (energy minimization), NPT (isothermal–isobaric ensemble) and NVT (canonical ensemble). Data analysis was conducted by using the processing code for number density along the z axis.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51925806 (Z.W.), 51838009 (Z.W.), 52200108 (R.D.)), the US National Science Foundation (2017998 (S.L.)) and the Shanghai Sailing Program (22YF1450700 (R.D.)) for financial support.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Ruobin Dai, Huimin Zhou, Tianlin Wang, Zhiwei Qiu & Zhiwei Wang

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Li Long & Chuyang Y. Tang

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Shihong Lin

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Contributions

R.D., S.L., C.Y.T. and Z.W. conceived the idea and designed the research. R.D., H.Z., T.W., Z.Q. and L.L. performed the experiment including nanoemulsion preparation, simulation, membrane fabrication, characterization and performance test. S.L. and C.Y.T. provided constructive suggestions for the results and discussion. R.D., S.L., C.Y.T. and Z.W. contributed to writing the manuscript. All co-authors discussed the results.

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Correspondence to Shihong Lin, Chuyang Y. Tang or Zhiwei Wang.

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Dai, R., Zhou, H., Wang, T. et al. Nanovehicle-assisted monomer shuttling enables highly permeable and selective nanofiltration membranes for water purification. Nat Water 1, 281–290 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-022-00010-3

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