حبیب اعتمادی

In this work, polycarbonate (PC) membrane was coated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/silver (Ag) solution using dip-coating technique for the first time. The prepared thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy, FESEM, AFM, and water contact angle. All membranes were applied for the removal of humic acid (HA) in a submerged membrane system under various transmembrane pressure (TMP) conditions. FESEM images confirmed the formation of PVA thin layer on the PC support membrane as well as the appropriate distribution of Ag nanoparticles. The experimental results reveal that the PC support membrane exhibits a water contact angle of 76.3°, while this value significantly decreased for the TFN membrane which contains 0.1 wt.% of Ag nanoparticles (55.1°). The obtained results from HA filtration revealed that at lower vacuum TMP (0.4 bar) conditions, PC/PVA-Ag (0.1) TFN membrane shows higher performance in terms of flux, flux recovery ratio (FRR) and HA rejection.