Abstract
A novel natural polymer blend membrane, namely chitosan/silk fibroin blend membrane, was prepared. The selective solubility and the pervaporation prop- erties of alcohol-water mixture were studied. The results showed that the membrane was water selective and the separation factor of ethanol-water mixture could be improved compared to pure chitosan membrane, when silk fibroin content in blend membrane was no more than 40 wt %. The blend membrane exhibited a best perfor- mance, (i.e., the water in permeate was large than 99 wt % when silk content was 20 wt % and the crosslinking agent- glutaraldehyde content was 0.5 mol %). The mechanism of improvement on pervaporation properties was explained by reducing the free volume and freeing hydrophilic groups of chitosan because of the strong intermolecular hydro- gen bond forming between chitosan and silk fibroin in blend membrane. In addition, the influence of operation temperature and feed concentration as well as the pervaporation properties of isopropanol-water mixture were also studied. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 73: 975-980, 1999
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