Bola-amphiphile-imidazole embedded GO membrane with enhanced solvent dehydration properties

Abstract

Inspired by fast and selective water transport in natural Aquaporin (AQP), imidazole-quartet water channels (IQWC) constructed by imidazole-ureido (IU) molecular scaffolds, are excellent candidates to design membranes with fast and selective water transport properties. In this work, a water binding IU bola-amphiphile-imidazole compound was embedded with the hydrophilic and laminated graphene oxide (GO) to prepare IU-GO membrane. H NMR, TG, XRD, SEM, AFM and FTIR were conducted to characterize physicochemical properties of IU and IU-GO membrane. It was demonstrated that IU could well interact with GO to generate a robust membrane structure. The resulting IU-GO membranes were applied for pervaporation dehydration of n-butanol-water. The total flux and the separation factor of the optimized IU-GO membrane were 3506 g·m-2·h-1 and 4454 respectively when the membrane was measured at 343 K with butanol content of 80 wt%. Furthermore, the membrane exhibited good stability and separation performance during 120 h continuous operation test, showing great potential in application of solvent dehydration.