Stable Antifouling Membranes Based on Graphene Oxide Nanosheets for Organic Solvent Nanofiltration

Organic solvent nanofiltration has been commonly used in the pharmaceutical and petroleum chemistry industries. As a two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial, graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets have great potential for the fabrication of organic solvent nanofiltration membranes, while unfavorable swelling and peeling of the GO membrane have hampered their practical application. Herein, GO hybrid membranes with strong stability were designed using reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanoflake as intercalation and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) as binder to improve the interfacial bonding force between the GO hybrid layer and nylon substrate. Benefiting from the excellent structure stability, the optimized GO hybrid membranes exhibited a high water permeance (24.49 L m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1), an excellent solvent nanofiltration performance of 28.32 L m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1 for methanol and 10.11 L m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1 for ethanol, and a molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) of 320 g mol^-1. Furthermore, the GO hybrid membranes exhibit good antifouling properties with a higher permeance recovery ratio after physical washing with deionized water. Overall, GO hybrid membranes with excellent permeability and antifouling properties are expected to be valuable in the field of organic solvent nanofiltration.