Preparation and anti-fouling behavior of conductive and hydrophilic polypyrrole modified PVDF composite membrane

Abstract Conductive filter membranes have shown great potential in alleviating membrane fouling. In this study, polypyrrole (PPy) was used as the conductive material and sodium anthraquinone-2-sulfonate (AQS) was used as the dopant to perform surface modification on the PVDF membrane. After modification, the contact angle of the membrane decreased from 79.40° to 48.57°, and the electrical conductivity of membrane increased from zero to 1.60 S/cm. The good hydrophilicity and electrical conductivity of PPy-AQS/PVDF endowed it with superior antifouling capabilities, reducing the static protein (BSA) adsorption from 0.147 mg/cm 2 to 0.097 mg/cm 2 . Under the action of an electric field of −0.1 V, the flux decay rate of PPy-AQS/PVDF decreased, and the flux recovery rate improved.