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- Language
- English
- Conflict of Interest
- In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.
- Publication history
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Received July 24, 2025
Revised November 1, 2025
Accepted February 17, 2026
Available online June 26, 2026
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This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits
unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Most Cited
Enhancing Separation Performance of Polyester Composite Nanofiltration Membranes via Three Polyphenol Monomers: Synthesis, Characterization, and Application
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11814-026-00682-7
Abstract
Polyester composite nanofiltration membranes have been increasingly studied due to their stable solvent resistance in
certain organic solvents, and the preparation method is usually interfacial polymerization (IP). Polyphenols are important
monomers that determine the properties of membranes in IP reactions. Here, the three types of polyphenols are catechol
(CA), 4-methylcatechol (MECA), and 4-tert-butyl-catechol (TECA), which are used as three interfacial polymerization
monomers to react with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) to synthetize a composite membranes with a polyester toplayer based
on polyether-sulfone (PES) support. The prepared membranes were firstly used to separate the aqueous solution of crystal
violet (CV, 408 Da) and their swelling degree was tested in different organic solvents. Among these membranes, MECATMC
exhibited good separation performance and low swelling degree and therefore was used for subsequent investigation
and research. Then, the membrane NF-2MECA was used to separate the CV solution of tetrahydrofuran (THF), which has
a stable separation performance in 36 h test with a rejection of over 98% and a permeance of 30 L m–2 h–1 Mpa–1. It was
found that the chemical structure of different polyphenolic monomers played an important role in manipulating reaction
activity, and intermolecular forces, resulting in the separation performance.
