Towards fully epoxy-based thin film composite membranes for solvent-resistant and solvent-tolerant nanofiltration

Epoxide-Based Tfc Membranes with Tunable Performance in the Tight Nanofiltration Range

“…Commercial RO and NF membranes consist of a selective thin polyamide (PA) layer, that is synthesized on a porous support via interfacial polymerization (IP). This PA layer has an excellent perm-selectivity and is Inspired by the high tunability and intrinsic chemical robustness of epoxide-based materials ( Chen et al, 2018 ;Pascault and Williams, 2009 ), our group recently developed epoxide-based integrally skinned asymmetric (ISA) membranes via epoxy-amine curing ( Bastin et al, 2021 ), and epoxide-based TFC membranes via IP ( Bastin et al, 2023 ) and interfacial initiation of polymerization (IIP) ( Verbeke et al, 2021 ;Verbeke et al, 2019 ;Verbeke et al, 2020 ). To obtain TFC membranes via IIP, a bifunctional tertiary amine was used as the initiator, dissolved in water and brought in contact with a tetrafunctional epoxide dissolved in toluene.…”