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Free volume characteristics on water permeation and salt rejection of polyamide reverse osmosis membranes investigated by a pulsed slow positron beam

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Abstract

Polyamide thin film composite reverse osmosis membranes on porous polysulfone support were prepared using m-phenylenediamine, trimesoyl chloride and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) with various contents as precursors via an interfacial polymerization. The membrane with heterogeneous multilayer structure was depth-profiled by positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy based on a pulsed slow positron beam and the thickness of the polyamide active layer can be estimated through fitting the results of depth dependence of o-Ps intensity. The free volume characteristics in the polyamide selective layer of the membranes were evaluated and were correlated with the permeation properties. With increasing DMSO content, mean free volume size (VFV) was enlarged, which was responsible for the enhanced water and sodium chloride permeation. However, the salt rejection was significantly decreased with a slight increase in the VFV around a critical value of 88.0 Å3, which was the average size of hydrated sodium and chloride ions. It was well interpreted for that the broadened free volume distribution enables an amount of larger free volumes to be involved in the salt permeation, although little change in VFV was found.

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Acknowledgements

The work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grants Nos. 11575130, 11705029 and 11575129), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2042018kf0239) and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (No. 2017A030313038). We are grateful to Drs. B. E. O’Rourke, N. Oshima and K. Ito for their helpful discussions and comments.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Nuclear Solid State Physics Hubei Province, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Jingjing Li, Chongshan Yin, Xiaowei Zhang, Yawei Zhou, Zheng Wang, Pengfei Fang & Chunqing He

  2. School of Materials Science and Energy Engineering, Foshan University, Foshan, 528000, China

    Bangyun Xiong

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  1. Jingjing Li
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Li, J., Xiong, B., Yin, C. et al. Free volume characteristics on water permeation and salt rejection of polyamide reverse osmosis membranes investigated by a pulsed slow positron beam. J Mater Sci 53, 16132–16145 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2740-3

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