Surface-engineered TiO2 nanoparticles incorporated Chitosan polymer membrane for seawater desalination: Fabrication, characterization, and performance evaluation

The effect of surface coating over titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) incorporated with chitosan (TiO2-NPs/chitosan) was evaluated as a reverse osmosis membrane (RO) for enhanced performance on seawater desalination. The impact of surface coating on the chitosan membrane performance in seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) was investigated by altering the mass of TiO2-NPs (0.25 g and 0.5 g) used for the surface coating RO membrane. TiO2-NPs were applied to the membranes using a surface coating technique and dried to create a sturdy polymer structure. The characteristic of fabricated membranes shows the function group reflects on organic compounds from /chitosan membranes polymer (–OH, -CH, C=O, C-O-C, -CH3, C-O, and NH2). In addition, TiO2-NPs are expressed in the wavenumber range of 850-500 cm-1, which characterizes the presence of Ti-O-Ti bonds. Morphological and crystal analyses of TiO2-NPs incorporated in chitosan membrane show significantly smaller pores formed because TiO2-NPs are essential in the high permeability performance under the amorphous phase structure. Also, the high performance of fabricated membranes was evaluated against water flux and salt. Adding TiO2-NPs can decrease the water flux value by 23 L m-2 h-1 and increase salt rejection by 52.94%. In optimized pH, the seawater desalination had efficient recovery.