Graphene oxide incorporated thin-film composite membranes for forward osmosis applications

• TFC FO membranes are fabricated with GO incorporated PA layer.
• GO nanosheets are covalently bonded to the polyamide chains.
• GO-incorporated TFC membranes exhibit enhanced hydrophilicity and water flux.
• GO-incorporated TFC membranes also exhibit low fouling propensity.
• The optimized GO loading in the PA layer is about 400–600 ppm.

In this work, graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets are synthesized and incorporated into the polyamide (PA) selective layer to develop a novel thin-film composite (TFC) membrane for forward osmosis (FO) application. The chemical structure and morphology of the synthesized GO and GO-incorporated TFC membranes are studied by various characterization techniques. Compared with the control TFC membrane, GO-incorporated TFC membranes exhibit higher water flux and reasonable draw solute rejection. The effects of the GO loading on the membrane morphology and FO performance of the GO-incorporated TFC membranes are investigated systematically in terms of various characterizations and intrinsic separation performance. The influence of the draw solution concentration is also studied. The GO-incorporated TFC membranes also possess lower fouling propensity in FO test than that without embedded GO.