A defect free semipermeable composite membrane having excellent integrity
and high water permeability is provided. Said composite membrane
comprises an inside support layer to provide sufficient mechanical
strength; an outside barrier layer to provide selective separation; and a
middle layer to provide both chemical and physical binding between said
support and said barrier layer to bond them together. Three different
methods for making said defect free composite membrane are discovered.
These methods have been successfully utilized to produce high quality
coatings and defect free composite membranes, which are independent of
chemical composition and physical structure of said support. In the
present invention, ultrasonic sonication is discovered to be effective to
speed up the phase inversion process of a membrane casting solution, thus
allows produce a composite membrane at a speed higher than those
disclosed in the prior art. Said defect free composite membranes have
broad applications, ranging from filtration of fruit juice, wine and milk
to biotech down stream processing and purification of drinking water,
municipal and industrial wastewater.