A Study for Water Purification Using Reverse Osmosis Membrane Modified with Carbon Nanotube

Water desalination systems is among the methods used to produce potable water to be used for domestic, agricultural and industrial applications. Reverse osmosis is a common methods employed for desalination facilities, mainly because of its low energy consumption, and high efficiency for permeate production. The main aim of this research is to use nanocomposite containing carbon nanotubes to improve membrane wall performance. in addition, the increase in the flux as a result of decreased clogging surface on the membrane was also studied. To accomplish the objective of the study, the synthesized polyamid reverse osmosis nanocomposite membrane were used for purification of brackish water with the characteristic of having the electroconductivity of 4000 µs/cm. The modified raw-multi walled carbon nanotubes membrane was embedded through polymerization method in order to increase porosities and hydrophilicity. Analysis of Contact angle, SEM, FTIR and AFM were done for recognizing the compounds which were created on the surface of membranes and membranes hydrophilicity. Three sets of samples were prepared for testing in the membrane cell synthesis analysis. Water flux and rejection rates were assessed every 30 minutes. Results of this study showed that the membranes have soft hydrophil surfaces and by increasing nanocomposite concentrations with specified measure, the water flux increased up to 30.8 L/m2h which was noticeable compared to the simple polyamide membranes. Our results also showed that fouling reduced considerably and the clogging condition was reduced by nanocomposite membranes, and the rejection rate was higher than 97 percent for all synthesized membranes with pyrrol.