Thin film composite nanofiltration membranes fabricated from quaternized poly(ether ether ketone) with crosslinkable moiety using a benign solvent

Abstract

Thin film composite nanofiltration membranes were fabricated through dip-coating and in situ cross-linking of quaternized poly(ether ether ketone) containing a certain amount of tertiary amine groups (QAPEEKs) on polyacrylonitrile (PAN) support. The effects of the variables in membrane formation such as the coating polymer concentration, the curing temperature, and the cross-linking agent types on resultant membrane were studied and the membrane properties such as the barrier layer chemical structure, the surface element composition and morphology were investigated. The obtained performance of uncross-linked and cross-linked QAPEEK-70 thin film composites in nanofiltration test was compared. The results indicated that the cross-linking improved the composite membranes’ performance. For instance, the membrane cross-linked by bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (BPADGE) named M-C-BPADGE exhibited a MgCl2 rejection of 97.8%, a water flux of 11.8Lm−2h−1, a MWCO of 800Da and corresponding pore size of 0.69nm, while for its uncross-linked membrane named M-U, a MgCl2 rejection of 91.2%, a water flux of 13.5Lm−2h−1, a MWCO with 960Da and a pore size of 0.77nm were found. Furthermore, the M-C-BPADGE membrane exhibited selectivities of 16.0 for separation of mixed Mg2+ and Na+ cations, much larger than selectivity of 5.2 obtained for M-U, suggesting that the cross-linked membranes are promising in cation separation.