Grafting d-amino acid onto MF polyamide nylon membrane for biofouling control using biopolymer alginate dialdehyde as a versatile platform

[Display omitted] •Novel anti-biofouling membrane was functionalized using a green grafting platform.•d-tyrosine and alginate dialdehyde improved membrane hydrophilicity and smoothness.•d-tyrosine endowed the membrane with a good anti-microbial property.•Synergistic role of surface hydrophilicity and anti-microbial property was revealed.•This functionalization is quite facile with the potential for scaled-up application. Biofouling is the Achilles heel to membrane-based separations. Development of novel fouling control approaches is very demanding for world-wide application of membrane technologies. Herein, a synergistic effect due to surface hydrophilicity and anti-microbial properties was endowed by d-tyrosine grafting onto a commercial microfiltration polyamide nylon membrane using alginate dialdehyde (ADA) as a green facile platform. The d-tyrosine grafted membrane surfaces were characterized using ATR-FTIR, XPS, SEM-EDX, and AFM. d-tyrosine and ADA grafting significantly increased membrane hydrophilicity and vastly decreased surface roughness thereby mitigating biofouling with improved permeability performance. During pure water filterability test about 74% higher permeability was observed compared to the pristine membrane. Further, the flux recovery ratio for the d-tyrosine-ADA-nylon membrane (91%) was significantly higher than the pristine membrane (42%). Also, the d-tyrosine-ADA-nylon membrane demonstrated excellent antibiofouling performance when incubated with E. Coli culture. Henceforth, this novel membrane functionalization establishes a new green facile platform to alleviate biofouling with the synergistic effects of anti-microbial and surface hydrophilicity properties. Moreover, this functionalization is quite simple and direct, having the potential for scaled-up industrial application.