Effect of Polymer Ratio and Heat Treatment on Inhouse Membrane of Polyethersulfone

Abstract

The membrane technology has gaining more attention due to their crucial use in different fields such as water purification, sugars recovery. A small modification in the membrane morphology has significant impact on membrane performance. The impact of heat treatment on PES membranes was investigated in this study. Two flat sheet membranes were prepared from casting solution having 15 % and 18 % Polyethersulfone (PES) by phase inversion method. The fabricated membranes were then heated for 20 min at 100 oC. Initially, the performance of membranes was evaluated by measuring their water flux as well as salt rejection. The membranes were further characterized to investigate their morphology by measuring their roughness and porosity. The results revealed that the heat treatment has significant influence on the membrane structure, the PES 15 % membrane roughness improved from 41.9 to 36.1 nm after heat treatment, also PES 18 % membrane roughness improved from 16.5 to 18.6 nm after treating thermally. The water flux of PES 15 % and 18 % dropped from 148 to 33 and from 25 to 13 respectively which proved that the membranes shrank due to heat treatment. In addition, salt rejection results supported water flux results. Thus, heat treatment showed an important effect on membrane morphology and can enhance the membrane performance.