Performance Study of Cellulose Acetate Blended Polyvinylchloride Membranes

Abstract

In this paper, polymeric membranes were prepared by uniformly dispersing the cellulose acetate, polyethylene glycol and polyvinyl pyrrolidone particles in a polyvinyl chloride matrix for resolving the demand for azeotropic mixture separations. The polymeric membranes were characterized using SEM, FTIR and XRD analysis. The results show that the blending of cellulose acetate and plasticizer diethyl phthalate significantly improved the separation performance of the membranes. The selectivity was increased by adding cellulose acetate up to 2% wt and polyethylene glycol 1% wt. Pervaporation setup was used to separate azeotropic mixture using the prepared membrane. The optimum results were obtained for dehydration of alcohol where the composition plasticizer was 0.5% wt. Based on the findings of the research, it was observed that the PVC membrane can be modified with CA and PEG due to their hydrophobic nature. The results show that the synthesized membrane can be used for removal of water from alcohol.