Influence of the various pore former additives on the performance and characteristics of the bare and EPVC/boehmite nanocomposite ultrafiltration membranes

The influence of various additives of PEG (with MW = 1000, 4000 g/mol), PVP (with MW = 10000, 29,000 g/mol) and Pluronic F-17 on the attributes and performance of the EPVC and EPVC/boehmite nanocomposite membranes was studied. Water contact angle, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyses and also the obtained results of pure water flux, bovine serum albumin (BSA) flux and flux recovery ratio (FRR) were evaluated to investigate the membrane attributes and performance. By adding 2 wt.% of PEG4000 to the matrix of the EPVC and EPVC/boehmite nanocomposite membranes, surface hydrophilicity, mean pore diameter and porosity improved. The nanocomposite membrane fabricated in the attendance of hydrophilic additive of PEG4000 exhibited the highest amount in pure water flux (701.4 L/m².h), BSA solution flux (116.8 L/m².h) and FRR (60.4%), indicating that PEG4000 is an appropriate additive for promoting the EPVC/boehmite nanocomposite membrane. Moreover, the rejection value of the BSA protein for all of the neat and nanocomposite membranes fabricated in the presence of various additives was higher than 98%, showing that the resultant membranes have outstanding separation performance.