Crosslinked Polytriazole Membranes for Organophilic Filtration

Pharmaceutical and chemical industries generate a large amount of organic solvents which need to be recovered for further use, otherwise will become waste solvent. Membrane technology can be used as an alternative process to more conventional separation methods with advantage of low energy consumption.

In this study we report the facile synthesis of new crosslinked polytriazole membranes for organophilic filtration by using poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PEGDE), which is not toxic and cheap crosslinker. The polytriazole is highly soluble in common organic solvents due to the presence of 98% of free OH groups, which can be easily processed by a phase inversion method. The resulting membranes are stable in wide range of organic solvents and in all range of pH. The THF flux is 49 L m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1 for the membrane with MWCO of 6.9 kDa and 17.5 L m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1 for the membrane with a MWCO of 2.8 kDa. By using different casting solution and different crosslinking time it is possible to tailor the MWCO of crosslinked polytriazole membranes to cover the range from the lower end of ultrafiltration to upper end of nanofiltration, indicating that these membranes can be used in wide range of applications.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)