Recycling of Polysulfone: Study Properties of Membranes

Abstract

Many significant developments regarding membranes have been taken place in past few decades. The wet phase inversion is a simple method to prepare asymmetric polysulfone membranes. Membranes were fabricated from polysulfone using N,N dimethyl formamide (solvent) and water (non-solvent) and permeation properties were investigated. We have explored the differences in performances of the membranes prepared from consecutive phase inversion of polysulfone. The effect of addition of sodium lauryl sulphate and their multi stage phase inversion were also studied. Functional group ruination/formation, Morphology, hydrophobicity, MWCO were analysed from different analytical instruments (viz. SEM, FTIR-ATR, TGA, contact angle, GPC). Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR-ATR) spectra of polysulfone membranes were analysed to identify the variations of the bonds. The results obtained from water permeation experiments showed that consecutive phase separation of polysulfone increased the water permeability of the membranes. The polysulfone membranes resulted from multistage phase separation showed decreasing trend in separation for polyethylene oxide (PEO, 200kDa) as well as Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA, 66 kDa).