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ARTICLE

Effects of PEG200 on the Properties and Performance of PVDF Membranes in the Separation of MethanolWater Mixtures by Pervaporation

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Department of Chemical Engineering Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat – 395007, Gujarat, India

* Corresponding Authors: e-mail: ,

Journal of Polymer Materials 2021, 38(1-2), 49-61. https://doi.org/10.32381/JPM.2021.38.1.5

Abstract

The conventional process for methanol-water separation like distillation consumes about 60 % of total energy. As an alternative, researchers have developed a membrane-based separation process for alcohol-water mixtures separation. However, there is a big challenge for researches to separate alcohol-water aqueous mixtures using a polymeric membrane because of swelling. In the present work, the aim is to separate methanol from water by pervaporation using polymeric membranes made up of polyvinylidenefluroide (PVDF) and polyethylene glycol (PEG200) modified PVDF membranes. The membranes were characterized by thermogravimetry analysis (TGA), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). A study on the process parameters such as temperature (35, 40, 45, 50, and 55 °C) and feed composition (20%, 30%, and 40% of methanol) was carried out for pure PVDF membrane. The pure PVDF membrane was modified by adding pore-forming agent PEG200, which results in increasing the porosity of the membrane. Due to an increase in porosity of the membrane, the hydrophilicity of the membrane was found to be increased. As a result, higher water flux was observed than methanol flux in the modified membrane. For the pure PVDF membrane, the total flux increased with an increase of methanol content in the feed. The PEG-modified membrane is more selective towards water than methanol, so the higher methanol selectivity was found in the pure PVDF membrane.

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