Freestanding self-assembled sulfonated pentablock terpolymer membranes for high flux pervaporation desalination

Thomas, Elisabeth R.; Jain, Amit; Mann, Stewart C.; Yang, Yi; Green, Matthew D.; Walker, W. Shane; Perreault, François; Lind, Mary Laura; Verduzco, Rafael

doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2020.118460

Freestanding self-assembled sulfonated pentablock terpolymer membranes for high flux pervaporation desalination

Journal Article · Mon Jul 06 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Journal of Membrane Science

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2020.118460· OSTI ID:1638929

Thomas, Elisabeth R. ^[1]; Jain, Amit ^[2]; Mann, Stewart C. ^[3]; Yang, Yi ^[3]; Green, Matthew D. ^[3]; ^[4]; Perreault, François ^[3]; ^[3]; Verduzco, Rafael ^[2]

Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States); Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States); Arizona State University
Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States)
Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States); Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States)
Univ. of Texas, El Paso, TX (United States); Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States)

Pervaporation desalination has several advantages over competing desalination technologies, most notably an ability to select for or against volatile organic compounds and the ability to process high salinity feeds at a low transmembrane pressure. Pervaporation has not been commercialized for desalination applications because of its energy intensity. However, emerging processes such as hydraulic fracturing produce high total dissolved solids (>30-45 g/L) byproduct streams that exceed the operational limits of traditional reverse osmosis and could be treated by pervaporation. Here, we demonstrate free-standing pervaporation membranes with excellent permeance and high salt removal based on a partially sulfonated pentablock terpolymer with the tradename Nexar™. Pervaporation membranes were easily cast from this material with desalination performances comparable or superior to commercially available membranes. We found that the polymer degree of sulfonation and casting solvent polarity had a significant impact on the membranes’ water uptake but only a modest impact on the pervaporation desalination performance. Membranes with a degree of sulfonation of 52% (2.0 meq g^–1 IEC) and a casting solution composed of 50 wt% n-propanol and 50 wt% toluene achieved a water flux of 3.32 kg m^-2 h^-1 (permeance 135 kg m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1) with 99.5% salt removal in pervaporation from a 32 g/L^–1 sodium chloride feed solution at room temperature. We demonstrated that dense, non-porous NexarTM pervaporation membrane permeance and salt separation performance were superior to commercial pervaporation membranes and equivalent to commercial membrane distillation membranes, which have much larger pores. Here, this study demonstrates that commercially available sulfonated pentablock terpolymers are excellent membranes for pervaporation desalination because of their ease of casting and excellent performance.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: NSF; USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)

Grant/Contract Number:: AR0001103

OSTI ID:: 1638929

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1646519

Journal Information:: Journal of Membrane Science, Journal Name: Journal of Membrane Science Vol. 613; ISSN 0376-7388

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
Desalination
Permeability
Pervaporation
Salt removal
Self-assembled sulfonated pentablock terpolymers

Freestanding self-assembled sulfonated pentablock terpolymer membranes for high flux pervaporation desalination

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References (66)

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