Construction of catalytic pervaporation membrane with structure C/PAN/S to intensify esterification by in-site dehydration and proton providing

Abstract

Catalytic pervaporation membrane can effectively promote the forward esterification reaction by in-site water removing and proton providing. A catalytic composite membrane (CCM) with structure C/PAN/S was proposed. To reduce the damage that the catalytic layer does to the separation layer, the intermediate support layer was designed between them. Two-dimensional material g-C3N4-SO3H was added to sodium alginate (SA) to improve the separation performance. The impregnation phase inversion method was applied to build a porous catalytic layer. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) was added as the porogen, which greatly reduced the mass transfer resistance. By introducing Amberlite 732, the membrane was endowed with an efficient and stable catalytic performance. The preparation conditions were investigated for better catalytic performance. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used in this work to characterize the materials and membranes. The flux of the catalytic composite membrane is 582 g·m−2·h−1, and the separation factor is 590. The acetic acid conversion rate reached 97.5%. The acetic acid conversion rate remained at 95.7% after five runs, showing outstanding stability. The separation factor of membranes with structure C/PAN/S increased 10 times. The developed catalytic composite membrane with structure C/PAN/S would have broad prospects in the catalytic membranes field.