Forward Osmosis Membranes Fabricated on Microfilter Support with Sacrificial Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework Interlayer, By Seyed Abdollatif Hashemifard

Research

Title	Forward Osmosis Membranes Fabricated on Microfilter Support with Sacrificial Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework Interlayer
Type	Article
Keywords	forward osmosis, thin film composite membrane, ZIF-67, sacrificial interlayer, internal concentration polarization
Journal	ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.5c17555
Researchers	Amir Jangizehi (First researcher) , Reza Razavi (Second researcher) , Anupam Das (Third researcher) , Hasan Salehi (Fourth researcher) , Conrad Nickel (Fifth researcher) , Martin Berger (Not in first six researchers) , Christoph Bantz (Not in first six researchers) , Qusay F. Alsalhy (Not in first six researchers) , Seyed Abdollatif Hashemifard (Not in first six researchers) , Michael Maskos (Not in first six researchers) , Mathias Ulbricht (Not in first six researchers) , Sebastian Seiffert (Not in first six researchers) , Alireza Shakeri (Not in first six researchers)

Abstract

Water desalination is essential to address global water scarcity, and forward osmosis (FO) has emerged as a promising method due to its low energy demand. However, FO membrane performance is limited by internal concentration polarization and defects in the polyamide (PA) active layer when using highly porous supports. In this work, PA thin-film composite membranes were fabricated on microfiltration membrane supports modified with a sacrificial zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-67) interlayer. The interlayer reduced pore size and provided a uniform reaction interface for controlled interfacial polymerization while being easily removed by water after PA formation. By tuning cobalt and imidazole concentrations, we tailored the interlayer density and its effect on PA morphology and FO performance. The optimized membrane achieved a water flux of 25.5 LMH with a reverse salt flux of 4.27 gMH (active layer facing feed). Notably, by increasing the support pore size to 450 nm, the water flux further increased to 40.1 LMH. These findings highlight the effectiveness of a removable ZIF-67 interlayer in engineering high-performance FO membranes.