Development of novel SiO2-GO nanohybrid/polysulfone membrane with enhanced performance

Polysulfone (PSI) based hybrid membranes are developed by doping with SiO2-GO nanohybrid. The hybrid membranes exhibit improved water permeability with the rejection to egg albumin maintained at a high level ( > 98%). Especially, when the content of SiO2-GO in the membrane is 0.3 wt%, the water flux reaches a maximum that is nearly twice of that of PSI membrane. Compared with SiO2/Psf and GO/PSf hybrid membranes, SiO2-GO/Psf hybrid membrane presents the best overall properties, including water permeation rate, protein rejection, and antifouling ability, It can be attributed to the unique property of SiO2-GO nanohybrid, i.e., the high hydrophilicity and good dispersibility derived from silica nano-partides which are densely and uniformly coated on the GO surface and perform as a space layer of GO. C 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved