Abstract
Low access to electricity is a significant problem in small and distant areas, where power intensive treatment systems like reverse osmosis can complicate handling requirements. In order to mitigate the energy requirements in such areas, forward osmosis (FO) is an advance option to desalinate and provide potable water cost effectively. In this study, cellulose acetate (CA) was selected as cheap natural green polymer along with nanoscale titanium dioxide (TiO2) particles with different loadings (0.5, 1, 1.5 wt.%) and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as a binder to fabricate thin-film nanocomposite (TFNC) FO membranes. Various characterization techniques including XRD, EDS and SEM confirmed the capability of the developed membranes. The results convey that the use of titanium nanoparticles enhanced the membrane’s surface morphology resulting in smaller pore sizes, stable water flux, low reverse salt flux and higher salt rejection. The pure water flux of the nanocomposite membranes was dramatically increased compared with that of commercial and control CA membrane. The TFNC CA-TiO2-1 (with 1% TiO2 loading) was the finest membrane with an average water flux of about 58.21 (L/m2.h), reverse salt flux of 16.28 (g/m2.h) along with 92.6% salt rejection with 1 M NaCl as draw solution (DS). This work revealed that the membranes fabricated in this study are competitive with the current FO membranes. More importantly, they are anticipated to enable the use of energy-efficient and cost-effective FO-based desalination and would help to overcome global water scarcity and provide potable water to remote locations.
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This work was supported by Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, New Delhi, India (Grant No. ECR/2016/001668).
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Jain, H., Verma, A.K., Dhupper, R. et al. Development of CA-TiO2-incorporated thin-film nanocomposite forward osmosis membrane for enhanced water flux and salt rejection. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 5387–5400 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03415-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03415-x