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Influence of in situ silica gel supporting on the pore structure stability of polyacrylonitrile-based thermally crosslinked organic solvent nanofiltration membrane

  • Polymers & biopolymers
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Abstract

In this work, in situ sol–gel strategy was used to introduce silica gel in polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membrane pores, by which the pore structure of organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) membrane prepared with thermal crosslinking was maintained well. The chemical structure, microstructure and morphology changes of membrane during sol–gel and thermal crosslinking were systematically studied by FTIR, XPS, XRD and SEM. Benefitting from the introduction of silica gel, the fusion of membrane pore structure during thermal crosslinking was effectively inhibited by supporting the pore with silica gel. Therefore, the permeances of the thermally crosslinked membranes supported by in situ silica gel were greatly improved. Furthermore, the thermally crosslinked membrane showed excellent stability of OSN performance due to the generated ladder structure of membrane during thermal crosslinking. This work showed that in situ silica gel supporting is a promising strategy to stabilize the pore structure of PAN membrane during thermal crosslinking.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge for the financial support from National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFB3801200), National Natural Science Foundation of China (22278051, 21978034, 22178044), Science and Technology Innovation foundation of CNPC (2022DQ02-0608), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT2021TD03) and Dalian Innovation Team Support Plan in Key Areas (No. 2019RT10).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Dalian Key Laboratory of Membrane Materials and Membrane Processes, Group of Carbon Membranes and Porous Materials, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, Liaoning, China

    Yongyue Zhang, Lin Li, Hua Wang, Yanqiu Pan & Tonghua Wang

  2. Dalian Ecological Environment Monitoring Center of Liaoning Province, Dalian, 116023, Liaoning, China

    Xiaowen Wang

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  1. Yongyue Zhang
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  2. Lin Li
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  3. Hua Wang
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  4. Xiaowen Wang
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  5. Yanqiu Pan
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  6. Tonghua Wang
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Contributions

Yongyue Zhang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—original draft. Lin Li: Conceptualization, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing—review & editing. Hua Wang: Visualization, Investigation, Formal analysis. Xiaowen Wang: Investigation, Formal analysis. Yanqiu Pan: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing—review & editing. Tonghua Wang: Conceptualization, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Lin Li or Yanqiu Pan.

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Zhang, Y., Li, L., Wang, H. et al. Influence of in situ silica gel supporting on the pore structure stability of polyacrylonitrile-based thermally crosslinked organic solvent nanofiltration membrane. J Mater Sci 59, 728–741 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-09251-3

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