PEBAX membranes for water desalination by pervaporation process

Abstract

Hydrophobic dense membrane PEBAX were prepared, and their suitability for a water pervaporation process was studied. The effects of the following parameters on the water flux were determined as operating conditions [brine inlet temperature (28—54°C) and NaCl concentration in the feed brine (0—3.5 mol L-1)]. A water flux of 1.3—7 g m-2 h-1 was obtained using this type of membranes. It was found that, for our application, the optimal specifications for our membrane is a thickness of 100 μm and an operating temperature of 50°C that allow us to have a water flux of 7 g m-2 h-1 in the permeate side. These data are required for the manufacturing of a novel desalination system based on this type of dense membranes.

A Comparative Analysis of Pervaporation and Membrane Distillation Techniques for Desalination Utilising the Sweeping Air Methodology with Novel and Economical Pervaporation Membranes

“…Hydrophobic pervaporation membranes are commonly employed for the separation of trace amounts of organic solvents from aqueous solutions. Nevertheless, the research conducted on the use of this technique in water desalination is scarce, as shown by a restricted number of papers [5,[11][12][13][14][15]. The membranes used in prior research on PV brine and seawater desalination included a PVA-based functional layer [16][17][18], a GO-based functional layer [19][20][21], an organic silica/silicate-based functional layer [22], cellulose membranes [23][24][25][26], and others [27][28][29].…”

Hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane thin-film composite membranes for the efficient pervaporative desalination of seawater and brines

“…Similar to the selection of membrane materials for gas dehydration processes [19], most membranes tested to date for PV desalination are based on hydrophilic materials to enhance the solubility component to water transport. Specifically, PV desalination studies were performed with polyether-polyamide block copolymer (PEBAX) [20][21][22], cellulose-based [23][24][25][26], polyvinyl alcohol-based (PVA) [27][28][29][30][31][32][33], graphene oxide (GO) [34][35][36], sulfonated block copolymers [37,38], ion-exchanged polyethylene [39], inorganic [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], and mixedmatrix/hybrid [32,[52][53][54][55]] active layers. For example, Li et al [35] synthesized a GO active layer on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) support and reported a pure-water flux value of 67 kg m -² h -1 at 70 °C.…”

Vinyl-modified hyperbranched polyether cross-linked hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene-based polyurethane membrane for pervaporation recovery of butanol

“…Pervaporation (PV) has been proven to be the most promising method among various separation methods. 5,6 Various studies have been developed in butanol-water system using various membranes such as polydimethylsiloxane, 7 polyvinylidenefluoride, 8 polyurethane 9 (PU), and polyether block amide. 10 PU is one of the most widely used versatile polymers.…”