Effect of Polyvinyl Pyrrolidone on Polyvinyl Chloride-Graft-Acrylamide Membranes

Abstract

Polyvinyl-chloride (PVC) was dehydrochlorinated by alkaline-solution (NaOH) in determining molarity (3.0 M) followed by grafting with acrylamide (AM) monomer onto dehydrochlorinated PVC (DHPVC) backbone by free-radical graft copolymerization to produce new grafted polymer referred as graft 3M. Then investigated the effect of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) addition on the grafted polymer. Membranes from pure PVC, graft 3M, and graft 3M/ PVP were synthesis via a phase inversion method. The successful AM grafting onto PVC was confirmed by characterization of the membranes by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) analysis, porosity, pore size, and contact angle measurements. The new synthesis (graft 3M) and (graft 3M/ PVP) membranes show excellent hydrophilicity in compared to pure PVC membranes, confirmed by higher pure water flux (PWF). The graft 3M/ 3wt.% PVP membrane exhibited the highest pure water permeate flux was about 540 L/m2 h at 28 °C of feed temperature and 1bar of pressure, i.e. was improved by about 270 times compared to the unmodified PVC membrane and 2.35 times compared to the graft 3M membrane.