Electro-assisted CNTs/ceramic flat sheet ultrafiltration membrane for enhanced antifouling and separation performance

Ultrafiltration is employed as an important process for water treatment and reuse, which is of great significance to alleviate the shortage of water resources. However, it suffers from severe membrane fouling and the trade-off between selectivity and permeability. In this work, a CNTs/ceramic flat sheet ultrafiltration membrane coupled with electro-assistance was developed for improving the antifouling and separation performance. The CNTs/ceramic flat sheet membrane was fabricated by coating cross-linked CNTs on ceramic membrane, featuring a good electroconductivity of 764.75 S/m. In the filtration of natural water, the permeate flux of the membrane with the cell voltage of −2.0 V was 1.8 times higher than that of the membrane without electro-assistance and 5.7-fold greater than that of the PVDF commercial membrane. Benefiting from the electro-assistance, the removal efficiency of the typical antibiotics was improved by 50%. Furthermore, the electro-assisted membrane filtration process showed 70% reduction in energy consumption compared with the filtration process of the commercial membrane. This work offers a feasible approach for membrane fouling mitigation and effluent quality improvement and suggests that the electro-assisted CNTs/ceramic membrane filtration process has great potential in the application of water treatment.