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چکیده
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The massive wastewater amounts discharged into the aquatic system are becoming an increasingly significant concern threatening the ecosystem. The toxic nature of some inorganic contaminants in the wastewater, such as heavy metal ions, produced by some industrial activities can adversely affect marine life, plants and human health. Therefore, there is a necessity to eliminate/ minimize these contaminants to an allowable limit before discharge. Various techniques have been employed for this purpose including precipitation, adsorption, membrane technology, catalysis, biomass and biosorption. Among the methods, membrane separation endows limitless opportunities to separate these hazardous heavy metal ions at minimal economic and environmental costs. However, membrane fouling by metal ions precipitates is the major issue that diminishes permeation and retention of the entire process efficiency and needs to be urgently resolved. Herein, MXene as hydrophilic 2D nanosheets has been suggested to tailor the polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) flat sheet membrane characteristics via bulk modification. The classical phase separation process was harnessed for membrane fabrication. The amount of MXene varied in the PPSU polymeric matrix from 0-1.5wt.% while a series of characterization tools have been employed to detect the surface characteristics changes. This included atomic force microscopy (AFM), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), contact angle, pore size and porosity, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Results disclosed that MXene co
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