Preparation and characterization of ZnO/polyethersulfone (PES) hybrid membranes

With nano-ZnO as an additive, polyethersulfone (PES) membranes and a series of ZnO/PES hybrid membranes were prepared by a phase-inversion method. Experimental results show that, with the increase of addition weight of nano-ZnO the contact angle decreases and the therm decomposition temperature increases. The porosity of ZnO/PES hybrid membrane is improved by adding nano-ZnO. The flux of ZnO/PES hybrid membrane exhibits an improvement of 254% relative to that of the PES membrane, whereas the rejection is changed a little. After 90 min of continuous filtrating of BSA solution (1 g/L, pH = 7.4), the flux decreased ratio of the ZnO/PES hybrid membrane (with 0.3 g of added nano-ZnO) is only 7.8%, which implies that the antifouling properties are significantly improved relative to those of the PES membrane. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.