A novel organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) membrane fabricated by Poly (m-phenylene isophthalamide) (PMIA) under large-scale and continuous process

The organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) membranes are an attractive candidate that enable carbon-neutral nature in both isolation and purification process. However, the application of current commercial available OSN membranes is severely hindered by their inferior permeability and selectivity. Here, using poly(mphenylene isophthalamide) (PMIA) as support, a thin film composite (TFC) membrane with remarkably high permeability and ideal selectivity is fabricated in an industrial-scale manufacturing line and the relevant spiralwould module is successfully prepared. Optimization by the solvent activated, the TFC membrane with an extraordinary solvent permeation for acetone, methanol and acetonitrile are 63, 41 and 38 L m- 2 h- 1 center dot bar- 1, respectively. The nanofiltration performance of A-TFC membrane supports out-performs: at similar rejection (100%) the methanol and acetonitrile permeance increased dramatically at 10 and 5 times than current commercial OSN membranes, respectively. The spiral-would module is carried out in methanol and acetonitrile RB (1017 g mol-1) solution, which displays a high permeate fluxes and stable separation performances, methanol: 112 GPD, 98%; acetonitrile: 99 GPD, 99.3%. This work provided a large-scale facile process for high-performance PMIA based OSN membrane, and the fabrication of spiral-would module, which should be promising for manufacture of solvent-resistant TFC membrane in industrial scale-up.

Automated summary

In this study, a high-performance OSN membrane with high permeability and selectivity was successfully fabricated using poly(mphenylene isophthalamide) as support. The research also proposed a method for manufacturing spiral-would modules on an industrial scale.