Mineral scaling caused by multivalent metal ions can significantly hinder the long-term operation of nanofiltration membranes. In this study, in-situ interfacial polymerization including a posttreatment by using a citric acid solution was employed in order to mitigate scaling on the membrane surface. Under the optimal conditions (15 min of posttreatment with a 2 M citric acid solution), the membrane water permeance increased from 5.76 ± 0.2 to 15.1 ± 1.8 L⋅m−2⋅h−1·bar−1 for the pristine and the optimal membrane, respectively. The molecular weight cut-off of the optimal membrane was 399 Da, which allows for the removal of organic micropollutants in groundwater. Furthermore, the resulting membrane showed a Na2SO4 and CaCl2 rejection of 92.5 ± 1.9 and 11.4 ± 1.3%, respectively. During the anti-scaling tests, the membrane fabricated with this strategy exhibited a minor decline of the water permeance of 33.5% when subjected to the same water recovery process, opposed to 65.8% for the pristine membrane. This proposed fabricating procedure thus provides an effective strategy for retarding membrane scaling in desalination applications.
Driven by the diverse functionalization of halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) and advanced membrane preparation technologies, a tremendous progress in HNTs-polymer nanocomposite membranes has been made during the last dozen years. Yet even with these achievements, an elaborate and comprehensive overview on the rational design of HNTs-polymer nanocomposite membranes, their various application areas as well as the corresponding membrane performance status is still missing. Herein, we provide a timeline of the ongoing research on the advanced HNTs-polymer nanocomposite membranes and then outline the progress on: (1) versatile functionalization methods of the HNTs for the state-of-the-art HNTs-polymer nanocomposite membranes. (2) key routes to prepare and design the HNTs-polymer nanocomposite membranes, and the corresponding influences of the modified HNTs on their membrane structures and performances. (3) the overall inductive performances for specific applications in the areas of water treatment, gas treatment, energy conversion, as well as biomedicine. We envision that an insightful perspective will be timely presented in this review to stimulate the innovation in developing more advanced HNTs-polymer nanocomposite membranes, and then motivating and extending their applications.