Pervaporative desalination of concentrated brine solution employing crosslinked PVA/silicate nanoclay membranes

Laponite nanodiscs are low cost synthetic silicate clay with extreme hydrophilic behavior. Therefore, laponite can be used to enhance pervaporation membranes' performance. Poly(vinyl alcohol), (PVA)/laponite pervaporation membranes were fabricated via simple exfoliation method of the nanoclay in the polymer solution followed by chemical crosslinking using glutaraldehyde (GA). The fabricated membranes were employed to study the pervaporation desalination performance when treating reverse osmosis (RO) concentrated brine solution. The effect of nanofiller concentration on membrane properties, as well as the water diffusion coefficient through the membrane, swelling measurements was investigated. The highest rejection of similar to 99.98% was achieved using 7 wt% laponite nanocomposite membrane at 40 degrees C with a flux of 31.2 kg/m(2) h. Increasing the feed concentration resulted in a decrease in water flux, whereas the salt rejection was negligibly changed. The influence of the operating temperature and feed salt concentration on the desalination performance 7 wt% laponite nanocomposite membrane (PVA7) were obtained at different temperatures in the range between 30 degrees C and 70 degrees C and feed concentration up to 100,000 ppm the temperature profile is expressed by Arrhenius relationship. (C) 2020 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.