High-performance and sustainable membranes for freshwater production from seawater and wastewater are essential to address the growing global freshwater crisis. In this study, a poly(vinylidene fluoride) membrane grafted with the neutral polymer poly(methyl methacrylate) (PVDF/PMMA) was functionalized with ZrO2 nanoparticles as a surface modifier using the phase-inversion method to achieve enhanced salt rejection and water permeance. The fabricated membranes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, and contact-angle analysis to evaluate their structural, compositional, and surface properties. The ZrO2–PVDF/PMMA membrane exhibited 75.81% and 57.30% improvement in salt rejection compared to bare PVDF and PMMA membranes, respectively, with a water flux of 13.37 L/m2·h·bar. The membrane demonstrated excellent stability under high operating pressure and across salt concentrations from 19.1 to 400 g/L, while maintaining >95% salt rejection over five reuse cycles. This performance is attributed to enhanced hydrophobicity (water contact angle of 84.3°), increased porosity (42.99% to 98.61%), and strong hydrogen-bonding interactions among functional groups (−CF2 and −CH2). The optimized membrane maintained nearly 100% salt rejection over 10 h of continuous dead-end filtration and was successfully scaled to the laboratory level, highlighting its practical potential for real-world desalination applications.
Bhoi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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