Fabrication and Characterization of Zeolite-Polyamide Thin Film Nanocomposite (TFN) Nanofiltration Membrane

This paper presents fabrication of polyamide thin film composite and zeolite-polyamide thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) membrane via in situ interfacial polymerization on a porous polysulfone support membrane. Polysulfone (PSf) nanofiltration membrane was prepared using phase inversion induced by immersion precipitation technique. Thin-film composite polyamide nanofiltration membrane was fabricated using interfacial polymerization of 1,3-phenylenediamine (MPD) with trimesoyl chloride (TMC). The zeolitepolyamide nanocomposite membrane was prepared exactly as same as TFC membrane, except that naturalzeolite nanoparticles were dispersed in hexane-TMC solution under ultrasonication immediately prior to theinterfacial polymerization reaction. The morphology studies of the prepared NF membranes by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed the increasing of the thickness of TFC membrane after the incorporation of zeolite nanoparticles in PA layer