Vacuum-Assisted Interfacial Polymerization Technique for Enhanced Pervaporation Separation Performance of Thin-Film Composite Membranes

• Published in: Membranes (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 5; p. 508
• Main Authors: Gallardo, Marwin R, Ang, Micah Belle Marie Yap, Millare, Jeremiah C, Huang, Shu-Hsien, Tsai, Hui-An, Lee, Kueir-Rarn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 10-05-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Alternative energy; Aqueous solutions; Chemical properties; Crosslinking; Dehydration; Fourier transforms; interfacial polymerization; Laboratories; Membrane separation; Membranes; Microscopy; Morphology; Nanomaterials; Optimization; Pervaporation; polyamide; Polyamide resins; Polyamides; Polymerization; Polyvinyl alcohol; Pore size; Separation; Sodium; Solvents; Spectrum analysis; Surface roughness; Thin films; thin-film composite membranes; Vacuum; United States > US; Japan; Taiwan; thin-film composite membranes; polyamide; interfacial polymerization; pervaporation
• ISSN: 2077-0375; 2077-0375
• DOI: 10.3390/membranes12050508

In this work, thin-film composite polyamide membranes were fabricated using triethylenetetramine (TETA) and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) following the vacuum-assisted interfacial polymerization (VAIP) method for the pervaporation (PV) dehydration of aqueous isopropanol (IPA) solution. The physical and chemical properties as well as separation performance of the TFC
membranes were compared with the membrane prepared using the traditional interfacial polymerization (TIP) technique (TFC
). Characterization results showed that the TFC
membrane had a higher crosslinking degree, higher surface roughness, and denser structure than the TFC
membrane. As a result, the TFC
membrane exhibited a higher separation performance in 70 wt.% aqueous IPA solution at 25 °C with permeation flux of 1504 ± 169 g∙m
∙h
, water concentration in permeate of 99.26 ± 0.53 wt%, and separation factor of 314 (five times higher than TFC
). Moreover, the optimization of IP parameters, such as variation of TETA and TMC concentrations as well as polymerization time for the TFC
membrane, was carried out. The optimum condition in fabricating the TFC
membrane was 0.05 wt.% TETA, 0.1 wt% TMC, and 60 s polymerization time.