A fundamental study of organofunctionalised PDMS membranes for the pervaporative recovery of phenolic compounds from aqueous streams

Modified polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite membranes in which a known mol% of the SiMe groups were replaced by a short methylene spacer group terminated by one of the four side-arm functional groups, acetate, -CO2Me; ethylether, OEt; dimethylamino, -NMe2; and pyridyl, -py; were fabricated and tested in short term trials for the pervaporative recovery of cresols from aqueous solution. The influences of functional group type, functional group loading, pH, temperature and purity of the feed solution were investigated. Three commercially available hydrophobic membranes were also examined for comparison. It was found that significant performance enhancements, compared with an unfunctionalised PDMS membrane, were realised for all functionalised PDMS membranes, with dimethylamino and ethylether functionalities proving the most effective. A functional group loading level close to 20% was found to be optimal for this application, The influence of feed pH in the range of 5-8.5 was small on total flux but significant on selectivity for amine loaded membranes. By contrast, the effect of feed temperature was significant on total flux but negligible on selectivity. Low levels of phenolic impurities in a p-cresol feed solution were found to have negligible effect on the separation. Compared with commercially available zeolite filled PDMS and PEBA membranes, the functionalised PDMS membranes showed a better overall performance. The PV performance of all new membranes followed the trend: o-cresol > p-cresol > phenol. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.