In the hemodialysis process, membrane filtration is used to clean blood. Urea and creatinine are two significant
substances that should be removed from the blood during hemodialysis, which takes a great deal of time. To
decrease the hemodialysis process time, in this study, we fabricated novel polyethersulfone nanocomposite
hollow fiber membranes with silica and amine-modified silica nanoparticles via the non-solvent induced phase
separation (NIPS) method. Membranes have been evaluated in a membrane contactor system by two modes of
contact with fresh sweeper fluid (retentate process) and recycled sweeper fluid (circulated process) to remove
urea and creatinine from a synthetic blood-like solution. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) was carried out along
with pure water flux, contact angle, mechanical strength, field emission electron microscope test (FESEM), and Xray diffraction (EDX) to characterize the synthesized nanoparticles and fabricated membranes. The results
revealed that modification of membranes by silica and amine-modified silica nanoparticles increased the urea
and creatinine removal rate from the feed as the modified membranes’ separation mechanisms were adsorption
and diffusion. Furthermore, removal of urea and creatinine were higher in the retentate process than the
circulated process. The membrane samples containing 1.5% amine-modified silica nanoparticles had the highest
urea and creatinine removal rate compared to the other modified membranes containing fewer or higher aminemodified silica and/or silica nanoparticles in the both retentate and circulated processes. The adsorption kinetics
showed that the adsorption of urea and creatinine on the surface of the silica and amine-modified silica nanoparticles were consistent with the pseudo-second kinetic model, meaning rapid and possibly irreversible
adsorption.