Lysozyme‐Regulated Polyamide Nanofiltration Membranes With Highly Uniform Pores for Precise Molecular Sieving

ABSTRACT

Separation and purification of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are essential in the pharmaceutical industry. The successful implementation of polyamide (PA)‐based nanofiltration (NF) membranes for solute‐solute and solute‐solvent separations in the antibiotic pharmaceutical industry requires precise sieving capacity across various solutes and solvents. Nevertheless, the rapid and stochastic interfacial polymerization (IP) reaction generates non‐uniform pores. We report a lysozyme‐regulated IP (LIP) strategy to promote the accumulation and diffusion of amine monomers, thereby forming a PA‐selective layer with a high level of pore size uniformity. The PA membranes prepared by LIP feature transcendent selectivity coefficients for Na ₂ SO ₄ /NaCl (∼176) and antibiotic/NaCl (∼98), accompanied by an excellent pure water permeance of 17.2 L m ⁻²  h ⁻¹  bar ⁻¹ . The membrane also exhibits a high methanol permeance of 20.0 L m ⁻²  h ⁻¹  bar ⁻¹ and achieves a 5.8‐fold increase in APIs concentration during 12‐h operation. These outstanding performance metrics of the PA membrane are superior to those of state‐of‐the‐art NF membranes. Notably, the fabrication is scaled up to a large area (1.0 m × 0.3 m), signifying its practical viability for APIs separation. This work paves a new way to develop advanced functional membranes for effectively purifying pharmaceuticals and recycling solvents towards sustainable high‐value separations.