Preparation of enhanced antifouling graphene oxide cellulose acetate mixed-matrix membrane using ethyl lactate green solvent.

Membrane technology has received tremendous amount of attention globally, especially in the field of environmental remediation. However, the current membrane synthesis process usually uses conventional solvent namely N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), dimethylformamide (DMF), dimethylacetamide (DMAc) and tetrahydrofuran (THF) which is deemed to be not entirely safe for the environment. Associated with this, this study aims to adopt a greener approach in preparing the membrane via the usage of green solvent. First, cellulose acetate (CA) membrane was prepared by using ethyl lactate (EL) as green solvent under the presence of graphene oxide (GO). GO based MMM membranes were fabricated via phase inversion process by employing 20 wt% of CA, 80 wt% of EL and varying the concentration of GO from 0 – 3 wt% to probe the efficiency of GO nanohybrids concentration towards membrane performance. Several characterization processes were carried out namely surface wettability, porosity, and pore size measurement. Subsequently, the membrane performance was probe in their pure water flux and flux recovery ratio (FRR) capability. With the addition of 1 wt% GO, M2 (modified membrane) demonstrated improvement in terms of hydrophilicity and porosity for approximately 14.51% and 47.40% respectively. Besides that, membrane pure water flux and FRR increased by 2.56-fold and 3.46-fold respectively as compared to M0 (unmodified membrane). Owing to these findings, the usage of green solvent together with the nanomaterial was seen as a promising green approach in membrane synthesis process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]