Journal of Applied Polymer Science
Journal of Applied Polymer Science
5 years ago

Development of polyethersulfone phase-inversion membranes for membrane distillation using oleophobic coatings

Development of polyethersulfone phase-inversion membranes for membrane distillation using oleophobic coatings
L. Eykens, L. Stoops, K. De Sitter, B. Van der Bruggen, C. Dotremont, L. Pinoy
Highly porous macrovoid-free polyethersulfone membranes have been prepared using the phase-inversion process with water as the non-solvent. These membranes are of great interest for membrane distillation (MD) after application of a hydrophobic/oleophobic coating. The membrane structure was controlled by optimizing the process conditions and dope composition. Counter intuitively, increasing the polymer concentration favors the formation of larger surface pores under similar process conditions. A symmetric membrane is obtained when a sufficient amount of high-molecular-weight polyvinylpyrrolidone was added to the dope solution, which appears to play an important role in the structure formation process. The final membrane shows similar performance compared to commercial MD membranes. However, the membranes developed in this study show an oleophobic character, broadening the applications of MD. Moreover, the compressibility of these membranes is severely reduced compared to stretched membranes, which is expected to result in an improved MD performance at full scale. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45516.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1002/app.45516

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.