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Cellulose acetate ultrafiltration membranes customized with copper oxide nanoparticles for efficient separation with antifouling behavior
Author(s) -
Vetrivel Selvaraj,
Saraswathi Meenakshi Sundaram Sri Abirami,
Rana Dipak,
Divya Kumar,
Nagendran Alagumalai
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.49867
Subject(s) - membrane , biofouling , cellulose acetate , nanocomposite , chemical engineering , materials science , ultrafiltration (renal) , contact angle , phase inversion , nanoparticle , permeation , copper , oxide , chromatography , chemistry , composite material , nanotechnology , metallurgy , biochemistry , engineering
Cellulose acetate (CA) nanocomposite ultrafiltration membranes are fabricated with copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles with the aim of improving efficient protein separation and antifouling performance. CuO nanoparticles are synthesized from cupric nitrate using a wet precipitation method and characterized by FTIR and XRD. CA/CuO nanocomposite membranes fabricated using 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 wt% of CuO nanoparticles individually by simple phase inversion technique. The CA nanocomposite membrane with 0.5 wt% of hydrophilic CuO exhibited enhanced PWF of 118.6 Lm −2 h −1 due to the improvement in porosity and water uptake. This is in good agreement with the enhanced hydrophilicity of the CA/CuO nanocomposite membranes results observed in surface contact angle and morphological investigations. Further, 95.5% of BSA separation and 94.7% of flux recovery ratio (FRR) indicates its superior antifouling potential caused due to the presence of the hydration layer at the CA/CuO membrane surface. Among all the fabricated membranes, the CA‐0.5 nanocomposite membrane with 0.5 wt% of CuO exhibited superiorly improved hydrophilicity, water permeation, BSA separation, and antifouling performance indicates its potential use in water and wastewater treatment applications.