Sang Hoon Lee  Sang Youn Oh  Eui Hwa Kim

Vol. 60,  No. 4, pp. 264-272, Aug.  2023
10.12772/TSE.2023.60.264

Poly(vinyl alcohol) Membrane Phase separation Hydrophilic water resistance

PDF

In seawater desalination, water purification or energy recovery ventilators (ERVs), it is known that hydrophilic materials are more advantageous than hydrophobic materials to reduce pollution and improve moisture permeability when water or moisture passes through a membrane. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) is also known to have excellent mechanical properties, chemical resistance, and thermal stability as an inherently hydrophilic crystalline polymer. In this study, the various water-insoluble PVA membranes were prepared through the non-solvent induced phase separation process so that they can be used in water environments while maintaining the characteristics of PVA. And the following results were obtained by testing the coating, coagulation conditions for pore formation, and crosslinking conditions for water stability of the PVA membrane. As a result of the experiment by selecting various non-solvents to induce micropores of PVA membrane through the phase separation, it was confirms that micropores were well formed when ethyl alcohol was used as a non-solvent. To make a stable PVA membrane in the water environment, crosslinking was performed on the PVA membrane using sulfosuccinic acid (SSA) and glutaraldehyde (GA). As a result, it was confirmed that the pores formed by phase separation process were well maintained when crosslinking was performed under the conditions of GA rather than SSA. This could be explained from the results of FT-IR analysis, which confirmed the shift of the -OH peak and the split of the -CH2- peak due to the crosslinking of PVA and GA. In addition, in order to examine the water stability of the PVA membrane in a water environment, when the membranes prepared by various the crosslinking methods were immersed in hot water at 60 oC for 48 hours, it was confirmed that the crosslinked membrane under the GA condition showed a weight loss of about 12.2% lower than that of the SSA, and the micropores of the membrane were also well maintained.