Enhancing Separation Performance of Polyester Composite Nanofiltration Membranes via Three Polyphenol Monomers: Synthesis, Characterization, and Application
摘要
Polyester composite nanofiltration membranes have been increasingly studied due to their stable solvent resistance in certain organic solvents, and the preparation method is usually interfacial polymerization (IP). Polyphenols are important monomers that determine the properties of membranes in IP reactions. Here, the three types of polyphenols are catechol (CA), 4-methylcatechol (MECA), and 4-tert-butyl-catechol (TECA), which are used as three interfacial polymerization monomers to react with trimesoyl chloride (TMC) to synthetize a composite membranes with a polyester toplayer based on polyether-sulfone (PES) support. The prepared membranes were firstly used to separate the aqueous solution of crystal violet (CV, 408 Da) and their swelling degree was tested in different organic solvents. Among these membranes, MECA-TMC exhibited good separation performance and low swelling degree and therefore was used for subsequent investigation and research. Then, the membrane NF-2MECA was used to separate the CV solution of tetrahydrofuran (THF), which has a stable separation performance in 36 h test with a rejection of over 98% and a permeance of 30 L m–2 h–1 Mpa–1. It was found that the chemical structure of different polyphenolic monomers played an important role in manipulating reaction activity, and intermolecular forces, resulting in the separation performance.