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Updated: May 7, 2026

Ion-Exchange Membranes for the Fabrication of Reverse Electrodialysis Device
Published on: July 20, 2021
Outer-selective pressure-retarded osmosis hollow fiber membranes from vacuum-assisted interfacial polymerization for
Shi-Peng Sun1, Tai-Shung Chung
1Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS) , Singapore 119260, Singapore.
Abstract:
In this paper, we report the technical breakthroughs to synthesize outer-selective thin-film composite (TFC) hollow fiber membranes, which is in an urgent need for osmotic power generation with the pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) process. In the first step, a defect-free thin-film composite membrane module is achieved by vacuum-assisted interfacial polymerization. The PRO performance is further enhanced by optimizing the support in terms of pore size and mechanical strength and the TFC layer with polydopamine coating and molecular engineering of the interfacial polymerization solution. The newly developed membranes can stand over 20 bar with a peak power density of 7.63 W/m(2), which is equivalent to 13.72 W/m(2) of its inner-selective hollow fiber counterpart with the same module size, packing density, and fiber dimensions. The study may provide insightful guidelines for optimizing the interfacial polymerization procedures and scaling up of the outer-selective TFC hollow fiber membrane modules for PRO power generation.
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