Novel Grafted/Crosslinked Cellulose Acetate Membrane with N-isopropylacrylamide/N,N-methylenebisacrylamide for Water Desalination

This work aims to prepare new types of grafted and crosslinked cellulose acetate (CA) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes by phase inversion technique. The grafting and/or crosslinking processes of the pristine CA-RO membrane were conducted using N-isopropylacrylamide (N-IPAAm) and N,N-methylene bisacrylamide (MBAAm), respectively. The grafting/crosslinking mechanism onto the CA-RO membrane surface was proposed. Atomic force microscope (AFM) images of the pure CA-RO and 0.1 wt% N-IPAAm-grafted CA-RO membranes revealed that the surface roughness was 42.99 nm and 11.6 nm, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the 0.1 wt% grafted/crosslinked membrane indicated the finger-like macrovoids structure. It was observed that the contact angle of the pristine CA-RO membrane was 66.28° and declined to 49.7° for 0.1 wt % N-IPAAm-grafted CA-RO membrane. The salt rejection of the pristine CA-RO membrane was 93.7% and increased to 98.9% for the grafted 0.1 wt % N-IPAAm/CA-RO membrane. The optimum grafted/crosslinked composition was 0.1 wt %/ 0.013 wt % which produced the salt rejection and water flux of 94% and 3.2 L/m(2)h at low pressure, respectively. It was concluded that both the grafting and crosslinking processes enhanced the performance of the CA-RO membranes.