Modification of polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes by novel charged surface modifying macromolecule (cSMM) blends for water application

Abstract

The analysis on modification of the polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes by blending with Surface Modifying Macromolecules (SMMs) with end-groups of Aromatic sulfonate or aromatic benzoate for introducing charges at membrane surface is presented. The charged SMMs (cSMM) was synthesized and blended into the dope solution of polyethersulfone (PES) membranes. The synthesized cSMM was dissolved into the dope solution which consists of PES using N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as solvent. The membranes are prepared by phase inversion technique with the dry-wet hollow fiber spinning condition. The morphology of the fabricated membranes was observed from the Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM). The FESEM observation did not show significant difference due to cSMM modification indicated the base polymer remained relatively unchanged. The miscibility and existence of cSMM in PES membrane was then confirmed via Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) scan. The increase of pure water permeation performance of the modified membranes than the unmodified membranes was also observed.