The morphology and filtration performances of poly(ether sulfone) membrane fabricated from different polymer solution

Abstract

The performance of membrane filtrations are mostly determined by pore structure of the fabricated membrane. Selection of polymer and solvent in membrane preparation are influence the morphology of fabricated membrane. The present work discusses the morphology of PES membrane fabricated from different polymer system with constant preparation condition. Polymer system consists of 15 wt% of polyethersulfone (PES) and 85 wt% of solvents. The homogeneous solution includes of PES-dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), PES-dimethylformamide (DMF), and PES-N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP). The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of the types of solvent on the formed membrane morphology. Phase inversion technique is used to solidify the flat sheet membrane in deionized water as a coagulation bath. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to observe the morphology of membrane. A dead-end ultrafiltration module was carried out to observe the filtration performance of the fabricated membrane. It is proved that the different membrane solution affect the membrane structure in term of skin layer, macrovoid, and support layer. Furthermore, the changing of the membrane structure affected the pure water permeability (PWP). It is found that the highest PWP was reached up to 4.52 L/m2.hr.atm using PES-DMSO system.