Polyarylester nanofiltration membrane prepared from monomers of vanillic alcohol and trimesoyl chloride

Ammonium lignosulfonate (AL), a cheap lignin derivative with abundant phenolic building block structures, was first used as the monomer to synthesize a thin film composite nanofiltration (NF) membrane via interfacial polymerization with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) on the cross-linked poly(ether imide) substrate. The AL-TMC NF membranes show superior organic solvent resistance, the optimal NF-2AL membrane has a permeance of 0.97 L m −2  h −1  MPa −1 and a 98% rejection for Brilliant Blue R-250 (BB, 825 g mol −1 ) in DMSO. To enhance the permeance further, we adopted vanillic alcohol (VA), which possesses a molecular structure similar to the subunit of AL, to synthesize a VA-TMC NF membrane. Combining with characterizations of ATR-FTIR, 13 C NMR, XPS, SEM and AFM, etc., it is illustrated that the VA-TMC NF membrane is composed of polyarylester and exhibits high DMSO permeance about 21 L m −2  h −1  MPa −1 , the comparable BB rejection of 89% and a rejection of 81% for clindamycin phosphate. These results suggest a promising route to select potential monomers to synthesize desirable nanofiltration membrane with superior antisolvent property and separation performance.