Journal
WATER RESEARCH
Volume 47, Issue 9, Pages 3081-3092Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2013.03.018
Keywords
Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs); Nanofiltration (NF); Forward osmosis (FO); Antibacterial activity; Layer-by-layer assembly (LbL); Membrane fabrication
Funding
- Environment and Water Industry Programme Office (EWI) under the National Research Foundation of Singapore [MEWR C651/06/176]
- National Research Foundation of Singapore under its National Research Foundation (NRF) Environmental and Water Technologies (EWT) PhD Scholarship Programme
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Using layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly method, we fabricated novel silver nanocomposite LbL-Ag nanofiltration (NF) and forward osmosis (FO) membranes. The incorporation of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in the membranes did not adversely affect the membrane separation performance in NF and FO processes at low AgNPs incorporation levels (0.22-1.19 wt.% as silver). The FO performance of the xLbL-Ag membranes was better than or comparable to most NF-like FO membranes reported in the literature. In addition, the silver nanocomposite membranes exhibited excellent antibacterial properties against both Gram-positive Bacillus subtilis and Gram-negative Escherichia coli. Our results showed that the performances of the silver nanocomposite membranes are highly dependent on silver incorporation in the membranes, which could be controlled by using different membrane synthesis routines and doping of AgNPs. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first study on fabrication and characterization of novel antibacterial silver nanocomposite NF and FO membranes through LbL assembly approach. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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