Copper-Charged Antimicrobial Membranes for Biofouling Control

The goal of this project is to investigate the use of copper (Cu)-charged membranes to control biofouling. Our previous studies with copper-charged polypropylene (PP) feed spacers have shown, reproducibly, the ability of Cu-charging in controlling biofouling in flat sheet cross flow membrane operations without significant amounts of copper leaching from the anti-biofouling PP. Therefore, this polymer chemistry is being extrapolated to make membranes with increased biofouling resistance. Glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) is an epoxy that is useful to allow the attachment of a chelating agent, iminodiacetic acid (IDA), to the membranes in order to facilitate the chelation of electrolytic copper to the surface. Cellulose acetate and polysulfone membranes are cast using phase-inversion and charged with copper ions to make them anti-microbial. The pore size distribution analysis for the cellulose acetate membranes, were conducted by using various molecular weights of polyethylene glycol (PEG). Both the treated and original membranes were analyzed using atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) to detect the copper dispersion on the membrane surface.