Performance enhancement of a polydimethylsiloxane membrane for effective n-butanol pervaporation by bonding multi-silyl-functional MCM-41

Zhihao Si; Song Hu; Di Cai; Peiyong Qin; Qinghong Xu

doi:10.1039/c7ra11043j

Performance enhancement of a polydimethylsiloxane membrane for effective n-butanol pervaporation by bonding multi-silyl-functional MCM-41

RSC Adv. 2018 Jan 30;8(10):5127-5135. doi: 10.1039/c7ra11043j. eCollection 2018 Jan 29.

Authors

Zhihao Si¹, Song Hu¹, Di Cai¹, Peiyong Qin¹, Qinghong Xu²

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory of Bioprocess, Beijing University of Chemical Technology Beijing 100029 China [email protected].
² State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology Beijing 100029 China [email protected].

Abstract

In the current work, MCM-41/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mixed matrix membrane (MMM) was prepared for effective n-butanol pervaporation from a model aqueous solution. In order to improve the compatibility between MCM-41 and PDMS, different types of silane coupling agents including n-propyltrimethoxysilane (PTMS), n-octyltrimethoxysilane (OTMS), n-dodecyltrimethoxysilane (DTMS) and n-hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDTMS) were used to modify the MCM-41. The results showed that the highest n-butanol separation performance was achieved by bonding 20 wt% of PTMS-modified MCM-41 with PDMS. Under these conditions, total flux of 1476 g m^-2 h^-1 was obtained when separating a 1.5 wt% n-butanol aqueous solution at 55 °C. The total flux increased by nearly 40% compared to the pure PDMS membrane with no obvious changes of the n-butanol separation factor at the same time. The curing process of the casting solution was also significantly improved after MCM-41 modification.