A serious limitation of most commercial polyamide reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is their sensitivity to chlorine attack. By studying the hypochlorite degradation of aromatic polyamide RO membrane, this work was to get some understandings in the prevention of membrane depreciation and develop membranes with improved chlorine resistance. Membrane performances, including water flux and salt rejection, were evaluated before and after hypochlorite exposure under different pH and concentration conditions. The results showed that chlorination destroyed hydrogen bonds in polyamide chains, causing a notable decline of membrane flux especially in acid environment; however, membrane performance was slightly improved after the treatment of alkaline hypochlorite solution for a certain time, which was probably due to the effect of amine groups in barrier layer. Based on the attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) characterizations and performance measurements, the results indicated that N-chlorination reaction of aromatic polyamide was also reversible, ill other words, the N-chlorinated intermediate could be regenerated to initial amide with the alkaline treatment before ring-chlorination reaction. This conclusion provided several relative suggestions for membrane cleaning procedures. Finally, a method adopting surface coating was proposed to develop membranes with good chlorine resistance, and the preliminary results showed its potential for applications. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.