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Environment-benign preparation of Ag toughening TiO2/Ti tight ultrafiltration membrane via aqueous sol–gel route

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Abstract

A new aqueous sol was synthesized to prepare Ag-doped TiO2/Ti composite tight ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. This sol was prepared based on water (>95 wt%), for which the hydrodynamic size of 8 nm could be obtained by tuning the electrostatic and steric repulsive forces, breaking the limit of the polymeric sol–gel method to prepare tight UF membranes. For the preparation of the sol, high water content can significantly reduce the use of organic solvents and is more environment-benign. Moreover, Ag doping can considerably improve the toughness of the supported membranes to efficiently prevent the TiO2/Ti composite membranes from cracking and overcome the thermal expansion mismatch of ceramic membranes and their metallic supports. The prepared Ag-doped TiO2/Ti composite membranes presented a molecular weight cut-off of 3 kDa with a pure water flux of 24 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 and exhibited good dye removal capabilities. The proposed Ag doping method has considerable potential for the fabrication of integrated hybrid ceramic–metallic composite membranes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the High-tech R & D Program of China (863 Program: 2012AA03A606), the Project of Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), and the Innovative Research Team Program by the Ministry of Education of China (No. IRT13070).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 210009, China

    Yuqing Lin, Yuanyuan Cai, Minghui Qiu & Yiqun Fan

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials, Institute on Membranes and Modeling of Chemical Reactors, CNR, University of Calabria, 87036, Arcavacata di Rende, CS, Italy

    Enrico Drioli

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  1. Yuqing Lin
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  2. Yuanyuan Cai
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Correspondence to Yiqun Fan.

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Lin, Y., Cai, Y., Qiu, M. et al. Environment-benign preparation of Ag toughening TiO2/Ti tight ultrafiltration membrane via aqueous sol–gel route. J Mater Sci 50, 5307–5317 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9078-x

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