Preparation of polyaniline conductive membranes through immersion of dopant solution for dye/salt separation

The preparation of conductive loose nanofiltration (NF) membranes for effective separation of dye/salt wastewater mixtures remains a great challenge. In the current study, a novel method of immersing the polyaniline (PANI) membrane in some organic salt solutions to dope PANI membrane was employed to prepare conductive PANI loose NF membranes. Three dopants with different molecular weight, poly (sodium 4-styrene sulfonate) (PSS), sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), and sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (SDBS), were chosen to prepare the doping solutions under neutral and acidic (pH = 0.5 in HCl) conditions. The neutrally doped PANI membranes all had lower pore size distribution, lower Zeta potential, and higher conductivity compared with the undoped PANI membrane; and these properties were further enhanced for the membranes doped under acidic condition. The PANI membrane doped by acidic PSS solution (PANI-PSS-HCl membrane) had a pore size of 1.7 nm and a pure water flux of 44.7 L·m−2·h−1, and exhibited a rejection of over 99.9 % for eriochrome black T, acid fuchsin, congo red, and sunset yellow in the dye solutions, whereas less than 5 % for NaCl solution, which was suitable for dye/salt separation due to the large molecular size of PSS. When PANI-PSS-HCl membrane was used as the cathode, the membrane exhibited excellent anti-fouling performance with increased external voltage due to enhancement of electrostatic repulsion force between the anionic dyes and the surface of the conductive membrane. This work provides a simple and reliable method to prepare conductive loose NF membranes for effective separation of dye/salt wastewater with excellent anti-fouling performance under external voltage.