Cellulose hollow fibers for organic resistant nanofiltration

by G. Falca, V. Musteata, A. R. Behzad, S. Chisca, S. P. Nunes
Year: 2019 ISSN: DOI: 10.1016/j.memsci.2019.05.009

Bibliography

Cellulose hollow fibers for organic resistant nanofiltration

G. Falca, V.-E. Musteata, Al R. Behzad, S. Chisca, S. P. Nunes

J. Membr. Sci. 586, 151-161 (2019)

Abstract

Cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer, but it is difficult to process due to its low solubility in most of the

solvents. In this work, we demonstrate the preparation, of self-standing and defect-free cellulose hollow fiber

membranes made by a sustainable process for filtration in organic solvent medium. The hollow fibers were made

by the simple spinning technique using ionic liquids as a solvent. The spun solutions were prepared with three

different ionic liquids, having imidazolium-based cations and acetate or phosphates as anions. We used X-ray

diffraction to evaluate the influence of the different ionic liquids on the crystallinity of the cellulose and the

membrane solvent stability. We used cryo-scanning electron microscopy to investigate the porous structure of

the hydrated membranes, distinguishing it from that of the dry membranes. The hollow fiber membrane performance

was studied using dyes in water and ethanol solutions. The rejection of Congo Red (696 g mol−1) was

higher than 90% in ethanol and even closer to 100% in water. The best results were obtained by using 1-ethyl-3-

methyimidazolium diethyl phosphate and 1,3-dimethylimidazolium dimethyl phosphate. Our results indicate

that by using greener process is possible to obtain solvent resistant cellulose hollow fibers.