Abstract
Solvent-resistant UV-cured supports consisting of a semi-interpenetrating network of polysulfone (PSf) and cross-linked poly-acrylate were successfully synthesized for the first time using an alternative, non-reprotoxic, and biodegradable solvent. Tamisolve® NxG is a high-boiling, dipolar aprotic solvent with solubility parameters similar to those of dimethylformamide (DMF) and N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), making it an eco-friendly alternative. The support membranes, prepared via UV-curing followed by non-solvent-induced phase inversion, can serve as a universal solvent-resistant support for the synthesis of a broad set of membranes, for which the selective layer can be deposited from any solvent. Parameters such as UV irradiation time and intensity, as well as the concentrations of PSf, penta-acrylate, and photo-initiator in the casting solution were varied to obtain such supports. The characteristics of the resulting supports were investigated in terms of separation performance, hydrophobicity, porosity, degree of acrylate conversion, and pure water flux. The resulting membranes showed improved chemical resistance in solvents such as ethyl acetate, NMP, tetrahydrofuran (THF), and toluene. Solvent-resistant supports with different pore sizes were synthesized and used for the preparation of thin film composite (TFC) membranes to demonstrate their potential. Promising separation performances with Rose Bengal (RB) rejections up to 98% and water permeances up to 1.5 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 were reached with these TFC-membranes carrying a polyamide top layer synthesized via interfacial polymerization.
Highlights
Driven by the increased focus on sustainability and health, membrane technology has gained interest and is used in various applications as a more environmentally friendly separation technique due to its better energy efficiency, less waste production, and lower capital and operation costs compared to conventional separation processes [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The Green Chemistry principles encourage the substitution of harmful compounds with safer ones; Tamisolve® NxG was used in this study as an alternative, nonreprotoxic, and biodegradable solvent [13]
The viscosity of the casting solution increased with increasing molecular weight (MW), which resulted in a denser membrane caused by a more delayed demixing during the phase inversion [19,26,27]
Summary
Driven by the increased focus on sustainability and health, membrane technology has gained interest and is used in various applications as a more environmentally friendly separation technique due to its better energy efficiency, less waste production, and lower capital and operation costs compared to conventional separation processes [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The chemical crosslinking of a polyimide (PI) membrane with diamine is a well-known example It requires extra synthesis steps, including use of toxic compounds, and is less convenient for PSf due to the absence of groups on this polymer that can react [11,19,20,21]. By addition of a cross-linker (XL) and a photo-initiator (PhIn) to the polymer solution and a subsequent UV irradiation after NIPS, a semi-interpenetrating network of PSf with the reached XL could be formed. This network is known to increase the solvent stability properties of the synthesized membrane [22,23]. The obtained UV-cured PSf support served as a universal solvent-resistant support for the synthesis of a broad set of membranes requiring organic solvents during further preparation of the selective layer
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