The influence of coating super-hydrophobic carbon nanomaterials on the performance of membrane distillation

Membrane distillation (MD), as a hybrid desalination technology with super-hydrophobic characteristics, has been emerging in the recent year. In this contest, the outstanding features of carbon-based nanomaterials have promising potential to contribute to the MD process evolution. This work presented an endeavor to impart the super-hydrophobic features of powder activated carbon (PAC) into poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) membranes for DCMD applications. The FTIR indicates that the CNM was successfully coated onto the PVDF-HFP membrane which leading to higher contact angle values (from 83° to 124°, porosity (45% 86.9%) and water distillate flux at each increment in the PAC loading weigh. The novel coated membranes with 30 mg CNM led to an enhancement of the permeate flux (higher fluxes were obtained at higher CNMs loading) presented fluxes around 77 L/m.h and exhibited a high salt rejection (> 99.9%) in most cases.