Effect of the support layer morphological structure on the performance of forward osmosis hollow fiber membranes

A thin-film polyamide layer was synthesized on three different hollow-fiber support layers, each of which possess different morphological structures (i.e., sponge-like structures (SM-1), finger-like macrovoid close to the outer surface (SM-2), and middle-partitioned finger-like structures (SM-3)). In this work, we found that forward osmosis (FO) performance of thin-film composite (TFC) membranes could be significantly affected by their sub-layer...