the effect of additives on the polyethersulfone membrane structure prepared by vapor induced phase separation for oil/water emulsion separation

In the fabrication of the polyethersulfone (pes) membrane, several methods can be used to increase the wettability and improve the matrix structure such as the presence of pore forming agents# in this work, the concentration effect of three different pore formers polyvinylpyrrolidone (pvp), polyethyleneglycol (peg) and triethyleneglycol (teg) was examined on membrane performance# the optimized membranes were characterized by atr-ftir, sem and oil/water separation test using cross-flow membrane filtration# the experimental results showed that using a certain amount of additives in nips-vips method can increase the flux up to 123 l/m2#h and 432 l/m2#h in the case of oil in water separation and pure water, respectively at the operating pressure of 1#5 bar# therefore it can be concluded that the pes membranes are more applicable to the filtration of oily wastewater incorporating peg, pvp and teg as pore forming agent# the results confirmed the potential industrial application of pvp to minimize the fouling tendency of the membranes#