Dopamine incorporated forward osmosis membranes with high structural stability and chlorine resistance

The degradation and detachment of the polyamide (PA) layer for the conventional thin-film composite (TFC) membranes due to chemical disinfectants cleaning with chlorine and material difference of PA layer and substrate are two major bottlenecks of forward osmosis (FO) technology. In this study, a new type of FO membranes was first prepared by controlling dopamine (DA) as the sole amine in the aqueous phase and the reaction with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) as the acyl chloride during interfacial polymerization (IP) process. The influence of membrane synthesis parameters such as monomer concentration, pH of the aqueous phase, IP reaction time and IP temperature were systematically investigated. The optimized membrane showed both improved structure stability and chlorine resistance, more so than the conventional TFC membrane. In general, novel DA/TMC TFC membranes could be an effective strategy to synthesize high-performance FO membranes with excellent structural stability and chlorine resistance.