Self-assembly of polyelectrolyte multilayer pervaporation membranes by a dynamic layer-by-layer technique on a hydrolyzed polyacrylonitrile ultrafiltration membrane

By Guojun Zhang, Haihong Yan, S. Ji, Zhong-zhou Liu. 2007

148 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper is concerned with the self-assembly of polyelectrolyte multilayer membranes (PEMMs) by using dynamic layer-by-layer (LBL) adsorption technique for pervaporation separation of water/alcohol mixtures. The polyacrylonitrile (PAN) ultrafiltration membrane used as a support was firstly hydrolyzed with alkaline solutions followed by alternatively depositing polyethyleneimine (PEI) and polyacrylic acid (PAA) under a pressure of 0.1 MPa. The PEI–ethanol solution and PEI-aqueous solution were used to investigate the effects of solvents on the assembly process. It was found that both separation factor and permeate flux were improved remarkably by replacing PEI aqueous solution with PEI–ethanol solution. Because only a few composite bilayers were needed to achieve a good capability in the dynamic LBL process, the hydrolysis degrees of PAN support membrane would strongly affect the pervaporation membrane performances. It was also noted that the exposure of membranes to low pH after hydrolysis would not benefit for the assembly. Further studies were conducted to investigate the effects of alkali species on the PAN hydrolysis and pervaporation performances of PEMMs. The contribution of alkali species on the pervaporation performance was in the order of KOH > NaOH > LiOH. Finally, the performances of PEI/PAA multilayer membranes assembled on the hydrolyzed PAN support were evaluated with a relatively wide range of feed temperature and concentration. The PEMMs obtained with only 2.5 bilayers had a separation factor of 604 and a permeate flux of 314 g/m2 h (70 °C) for pervaporation of 95 wt% ethanol–water mixture.

Subfields: Mechanical Engineering, Surfaces, Coatings and Films, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d72978b565600c2b4755ed38a739a12c1b7fd8d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Mechanical Engineering

1. B. Mi
2. Meng Hu
3. Guojun Zhang
4. T. Chung
5. Phuoc H. H. Duong
6. Mohammad Askari
7. Yi Li
8. Ting Yang

In Surfaces, Coatings and Films

1. B. Mi
2. Meng Hu
3. T. Chung

In Water Science and Technology

1. Meng Hu
2. B. Mi
3. Phuoc H. H. Duong
4. T. Chung
5. Huanting Wang
6. W. Jin
7. Gongpin Liu
8. Dan Li

Citations in the corpus

• Layer-by-layer assembly of graphene oxide membranes via electrostatic interaction (2014, methodology): “Due to the convenience in manipulating its structure and functional groups, PAN was selected to fabricate the membrane support via phase inversion [17].”
• Self-assembly of graphene oxide and polyelectrolyte complex nanohybrid membranes for nanofiltration and pervaporation (2012, methodology): “According to our previous study [22], the PAN UF membranes were hydrolyzed by immersing them in the 2 mol/L sodium hydroxide aqueous solutions at 65 C for 30 min.”
• Fouling reduction of reverse osmosis membrane by surface modification via layer-by-layer assembly (2012, background): “A few research groups have applied the principles of LbL assembly to membrane separation processes, for instance, to nanofiltration (NF) [23], pervaporation [24,25] and gas separation [26].”
• Application of thin film composite membranes with forward osmosis technology for the separation of emulsified oil–water (2014, background): “4, the absorption peak at 1560 cm 1 of the FTIR spectrum of the PAN support indicates the stretching vibrations of the –COONa groups of the support [39,40].”