 | The Development of Nano-Composite Polysulphone Membranes |
| Expanded Title: | The research programme was designed to facilitate capacity building in the field of designing and preparation of novel polymer composites with the desired characteristics for water treatment applications, to demonstrate the suitability of electrochemical methods as analytical tools to evaluate membrane materials and to demonstrate membrane performance capacity in laboratory scale experiments.
Polysulfone modified with selected catalytic metal nanoparticles was successfully achieved. The polysulfone composite based on homogeneous incorporation of Ni nanoparticles, before film casting, was observed to have the smallest pore size and highest pore distribution per unit area. The Ninanoparticles adopted the hexagonally close packed unit arrangement with packing efficiency up to 74%. In the analytical evaluation of PSF/Ni composites drop coated to form thin film chemical sensors, a very good sensitivity towards tannic acid and alginic acid was observed with a linear response in the micro molar concentration range.
A second synthetic approach was evaluated that does not involve metal nanoparticles, based on chemical crosslinking of polysulfone with a hydrophilic polymer to produce mechanically stable hydrophilic hydrogels. Polysufone and polyvinyl alcohol were chemically cross linked using a short chain di-aldehyde to produce hydrogels with greatly reduced hydrophobicity, irrespective of the ratio of the starting polymers. All hydrogels showed similarities to the metal nanoparticle modified polysulfone in terms of surface morphology and electrochemical evaluation of mass transport properties to the thin film hydrogel surface in a three electrode arrangement. All hydrogel materials showed very good sensitivity and linear response to tannic acid and alginic acid at micro molar concentrations. Overall the project has been successful in achieving all its objectives for materials design, development and testing at a laboratory scale. |
| Date Published: | 01/12/2014 |
| Document Type: | Research Report |
| Document Subjects: | Wastewater Management - Industrial |
| Document Keywords: | Technology, Water Quality |
| Document Format: | Report |
| Document File Type: | pdf |
| Research Report Type: | Standard |
| WRC Report No: | 2006/1/14 |
| ISBN No: | 978-1-4312-0609-4 |
| Authors: | Baker PGL; Richards HL; Phelane L; Iwuoha EI |
| Project No: | K5/2006 |
| Originator: | WRC |
| Organizations: | University of the Western Cape |
| Document Size: | 2 477 KB |
|