A A Novel Poly (vinylidene) Fluoride/TiO2/Spent Bleaching Earth for Enhancing Hydrophilic Hollow Fibre Membrane

Nowadays, polymer as the raw material has been utilized in the development of Hollow Fibre (HF) membranes. PVDF is a commonly used for HF membrane material. However, it has hydrophobicity properties and lead membrane becomes low permeability and fouling. Therefore, to avoid these membranes problems, the incorporation of inorganic nanoparticles into PVDF membranes matrix is necessary to be applied for significantly improving PVDF membranes performance. This study investigates the characteristics and performance of PVDF-TiO2 HF membranes using spent bleaching earth (SBE) as a promising material from industrial waste as a renewable inorganic nanoparticle. This novel PVDF-TiO2-SBE HF membrane was fabricated using the subsequent steps: The preparation process incorporates SBE revival through solvent extraction and thermal treatment alongside the wet spinning technique for membrane fabrication. The Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) functional groups, scanning electron microscope (SEM) morphology, water contact angle and pure water flux performance were investigated to specifically understand the performance of this typical HF membranes. The IR results show that Si-O-Si groups were found in the membrane matrices due to the addition of SBE material. The addition of TiO2-SBE particles also indicate a sandwich (sponge-finger-like) morphological structure on the cross-sectional, a rough and porous surface structures. The hydrophilic properties of the HF membrane and pure water flux performance are determined by the composition of the TiO2-SBE mixture added as an additive material. The minimum contact angle found at 74.33°, while the water flux is 5.81 kg.m-2.h-1 on the identical HF membrane. Accordingly, this approach significantly enhances the properties of the pure PVDF HF membrane.