Enhanced water treatment performance of ceramic-based forward osmosis membranes via MOF interlayer

Forward osmosis (FO) membrane processes could operate without hydraulic pressures, enabling the efficient treatment of wastewaters with mitigated membrane fouling and enhanced efficiency. Designing a high-performance polyamide (PA) layer on ceramic substrates remains a challenge for FO desalination applications. Herein, we report the enhanced water treatment performance of thin-film nanocomposite ceramic-based FO membranes via an in situ grown Zr-MOF (UiO-66-NH₂) interlayer. With the Zr-MOF interlayer, the ceramic-based FO membranes exhibit lower thickness, higher cross-linking degree, and increased surface roughness, leading to higher water flux of 27.38 L m^-2 h^-1 and lower reverse salt flux of 3.45 g m^-2 h^-1. The ceramic-based FO membranes with Zr-MOF interlayer not only have an application potential in harsh environments such as acidic solution (pH 3) and alkaline solution (pH 11), but also exhibit promising water and reverse salt transport properties, which are better than most MOF-incorporated PA membranes. Furthermore, the membranes could reject major species (ions, oil and organics) with rejections ＞94 % and water flux of 22.62-14.35 L m^-2 h^-1 in the treatment of actual alkaline industrial wastewater (pH 8.6). This rational design proposed in this study is not only applicable for the development of a high-quality ceramic-based FO membrane with enhanced performance but also can be potentially extended to more challenging water treatment applications.