Comparative study of anion polyacrylamide (APAM) adsorption-related fouling of a PVDF UF membrane and a modified PVDF UF membrane

The high-molecular-weight anionic polyacrylamide (6880 kDa) adsorption related fouling of a virgin PVDF membrane (OM) and a modified PVDF membrane (MM) were investigated via analysis of particle size distribution, structure of membranes, influencing factors, SEM, and ATR-FTIR. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the mass transport characteristics in the adsorption system of APAM and two kinds of membranes. The adsorption of this kind of anionic polyacrylamide conformed to the Langmuir–Freundlich model, and the fitting R2 values were 0.9657, 0.9720 for OM and MM, respectively. The donation rate caused by static adsorption on the membrane fouling was not very big, and the relative flux (RF) of OM and MM was about 0.89 and 0.72, respectively. SEM and ATR-FTIR evidence was found to suggest that this APAM-membrane adsorption was mainly driven by micro-porous structure, while nano-particles could be another important factor for its physical and chemical interactions.

► The adsorption of anionic polyacrylamide on PVDF UF membrane were investigated.
► The static adsorption fouling of the membrane was not very serious.
► SEM and ATR-FTIR evidence were used to prove adsorption mechanism.