Internal concentration polarization (ICP) is a major issue in forward osmosis (FO) as it can significantly reduce the water flux in FO operations. It is known that a hydrophilic substrate and a smaller membrane structure parameter (S) are effective against ICP. This paper reports the development of a thin film composite (TFC) FO membrane with a hydrophilic mineral (CaCO3)-coated polyethersulfon...

This article describes the first successful detection of airborne Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae under experimental and field conditions with a new nested PCR assay. Air was sampled with polyethersulfone membranes (pore size, 0.2 micron) mounted in filter holders. Filters were processed by dissolution and direct extraction of DNA for PCR analysis. For the PCR, two nested pairs of oligonucleotide prim...

Asymmetric polyethersulfone (PES) nanofiltration membranes were prepared via phase inversion technique. PES polymer, Brij 58 as surfactant additive, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as pore former and 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as solvent were used in preparation of the casting solutions. Distillated water was used as the gelation media. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and measurement...

The effect of the streaming current flowing through the porous structure of composite membranes during tangential electrokinetic measurements was investigated. It was shown that neglecting this additional path for streaming current may have dramatic implications in the interpretation of the experimental data and on the determination of the membrane zeta potential. Experimental measurements of b...

This work focuses on the treatment of washing waters coming from surimi manufacturing using ultrafiltration technology at a laboratory scale. Four membrane materials (poly-ether sulfone, polyacrilonytrile, poly vinylidene fluoride and regenerated cellulose) and 5 Molecular Weight Cut-Off (from 3 to 100 kDa) have been studied at bench laboratory scale using the pilot Rayflow 100, commercialised ...

Biofouling is one of the drawbacks restricting the industrial applications of membranes. In this study, different thicknesses of silver nanoparticles with proper adhesion were deposited on poly(vinylidenefluoride) (PVDF) and polyethersulfone (PES) surfaces by physical vapor deposition (PVD). The crystalline and structural properties of modified and pure membranes were investigated by carrying o...

Protein contaminants in carmine can cause dyspnea and anaphylactic reactions in users and consumers of products containing this pigment. The method generally used for detection of proteins in carmine has low reproducibility and is time-consuming. In this study, a rapid, simple, and highly reproducible method was developed for the detection of protein contaminants in carmine. This method incorpo...

Several microscopic and scattering techniques at different observation scales (from atomic to macroscopic) were used to characterize both surface and bulk properties of four new flat-sheet polyethersulfone (PES) membranes (10, 30, 100 and 300 kDa) and new 100 kDa hollow fibers (PVDF). Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with "in lens" detection was used to obtain information on the pore sizes of...

In this study, we devised a novel nanofibrous adsorbent made of polyethersulfone (PES) for removal of methylene blue (MB) dye pollutant from water. The polymer shows a low isoelectric point thus at elevated pHs and, being nanofibrous, can offer a huge highly hydroxylated surface area for adsorption of cationic MB molecules. As an extra challenge, to augment the adsorbent's properties in terms o...

To generate polyethersulfone membranes with a biocatalytically active surface, pancreatin was covalently immobilized. Pancreatin is a mixture of digestive enzymes such as protease, lipase, and amylase. The resulting membranes exhibit self-cleaning properties after “switching on” the respective enzyme by adjusting pH and temperature. Thus, the membrane surface can actively degrade a fouling laye...