Conductive composite film with high flux and anti-pollution prepared by different functional MWCNTs combined with PPy synergistic effect

The hydrophilic and antifouling polymeric membranes attract more and more attention. Herein, functionalized MWCNTs/SP composite films were facilely fabricated by blending sodium styrene maleic anhydride (SMANa), polyethersulfone (PES), polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP K30), and functionalized MWCNTs. In addition, a gas-phase polymerization method was employed to deposit a PPy layer on the SP composite film, yielding conductive functionalized MWCNTs/PSP composite films, to prepared the conductive the functional-MWCNTs/PSP composite films with anti-pollution ability, high permeability and high selectivity. Among them, the addition of functional-MWCNTs increased the permeation flux and anti-pollution ability of the films. The MWCNT-NH/PSP composite film demonstrated remarkable performance with pure water flux of 453.9 L/(m 2· h) and methylene blue retention rate of 79.05%. Finally, MWCNTs-NH was co-blended with GO to construct an excellent conductive network, so that MWCNT-NH, GO and PPy had a synergistic effect to enhance the conductivity of the films, thereby improving the membrane’s retention performance of dyes and ions through enhanced electrostatic effect. Furthermore, the optimized MWCNT-NH/GO/PSP-2 composite film achieved maximum Congo red permeability of 252.44 L/(m 2· h) while maintaining high salt retention rates of 47.2% for NaCl and 61.0% for MgSO 4 .