Preparation And Characterization Of An Antifouling Poly Vinyl Butyral (PVB) Ultrafiltration Membrane

The carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have rapidly become the research focus ofchemistry, physics, and material science，because of its peculiar mechanical,electronic, chemical properties. In this study, mixed matrix hollow ifberscomposed of O-MWCNTs and Poly(vinyl butyral)(PVB) were fabricated.O-MWCNTs were carried out prior to the incorporation into the polymer matrixusing a simple and feasible two stages approach. Furthermore, blends of PVB，Polyvinyl pyrrolidone(PVP) with different molecular weight and O-MWCNTscomposition dissolved in Dimethylacetaniide (DMAc) were used to prepareultraifltration membranes by a classical phase-inversion method. The resultsverify that different PVP molecular weight and O-MWCNTs content evidentlyinfluence the morphologies, surface hydrophilicity, permeation properties,antifouling ability and mechanical properties of the synthesizedPVB/O-MWCNTs membranes. The hydrophilic, antifouling performance andfiltration resistance of PVB/O-MWCNTs membranes were characterized. Theresults also illustrate that the membrane made by15wt.%PVB,0.6wt.%O-MWCNTs,5wt.%O-MWCNTs and DMAc was excellent in permeationproperties, antifouling ability and mechanical properties.Solvent may inlfuence precipitation kinetics of the dopes and thenparticularly change the membranes morphologies when membranes wereprepared by non-solvent induced phase separation(NIPS) method. According tothe result of the solubility parameters of the PVB, small alcohol and watercalculated by hansen formula, small alcohol can be the solvent of PVB. Hence,PVB plat membrane were been lining-up by Immersion precipitation methodusing small alcohol as solvent with several different additions. It was found that with the addition of PEG, the phase separation turn to instantaneous demixing andall the membranes possess a asymmetric macrovoids structure.