| 초록 |
High-flux reverse osmosis (RO) membranes have been pursued to reduce the energy consumption in seawater desalination process. In particular, recent researches have revealed that surface characteristics of supports significantly impact on the performance of RO membranes. In this work, we incorporated carbon nanotube (CNT) into the polysulfone (PSf) supports to tailor their surface characteristics for high-flux RO membranes. As-prepared CNT/PSf nanocomposite supports showed highly porous surface morphologies without changing the surface pore size and hydrophilicity compared to the pristine PSf supports. In addition, such surface characteristics were responsible for the defect-free formation of selective polyamide (PA) layer with large surface area which gives rise to the flux improvement. Consequently, RO membranes using CNT/PSf nanocomposite supports showed enhanced water permeance at most 35% without losing salt rejection compared to those using bare PSf supports. |
