Studies on cellulose acetate–polysulfone ultrafiltration membranes: I. Effect of polymer composition

Abstract

Ultrafiltration techniques have particular advantages for simultaneous purification, concentration and fractionation of macromolecules. Studies are presented on novel ultrafiltration membranes, based on cellulose acetate and polysulfone blends, for the separation of proteins and heavy metal ions. The effects of polymer composition on pure water flux, water content, molecular weight cut‐off and hydraulic resistance are discussed. Scanning electron microscopy images of the membranes show the presence of segregated individual domains of cellulose acetate and polysulfone. The molecular weight cut‐off obtained from the protein separation studies is also presented. Applications of these membranes for separating metal ions from aqueous streams are discussed. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry

New applications of kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) as microfiltration membranes

“…As has been mentioned in some other studies [24][25][26], the effects of pressure on water flux confirms that higher pressure results in higher flux.…”

“…The rejection of dextran tends to increase with its molecular weight due to sieving mechanism in microfiltration which deals not only with pore size but also solute' size and its molecular weight [23,26,28]. Furthermore, concentration polarization is also a dominant factor which controls the transport of solutes through the membrane [29].…”

In situ generated silica nanoparticles as pore-forming agent for enhanced permeability of cellulose acetate membranes

“…While, when the coagulation bath was changed into hydrochloride acid/water (pH = 1) and sodium hydroxide/water (pH = 13), the pure water flux of all the prepared membranes was improved substantially. Take the CA(TEOS)-HCl membranes for example, when the weight percentage of TEOS in the casting solution was increased from 0 to 30%, the pure water flux was substantially enhanced from 1.7 to 436.6 L/m 2 h. It should be mentioned that using the above method, the permeate ability of CA membranes were enhanced much more significantly than other reported methods including employing different kinds of additives, such as Pluronic F127 [7], PEG400 [8], and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) [25], and blending with relative hydrophobic polymers [26,27]. We also investigated the flux stability of the modified CA membranes: it could be obviously seen from Fig.…”

Preparation and performance evaluation of poly (ether-imide) incorporated polysulfone hemodialysis membranes

“…As the PEI concentration increased, the immiscible nature of blend increases due to low adhesion properties between PSf and PEI chains. Further, this leads to the creation of void volume in the membrane because of the higher number of super molecular aggregates in the casting solution, which results in the formation of a larger number of small pores [28]. These small pores act as a domain of water molecules and it increased the water content of the pores in the presence of PEI.…”