Development of polysulfone hollow fiber porous supports for high flux composite membranes: Air plasma and piranha etching

Abstract

For the development of high efficiency porous supports for composite membrane preparation, polysulfone (PSf) hollow fiber membranes (outer diameter 1.57 mm, inner diameter 1.12 mm) were modified by air plasma using the low temperature plasma treatment pilot plant which is easily scalable to industrial level and the Piranha etch (H2O2 + H2SO4). Chemical and plasma modification affected only surface layers and did not cause PSf chemical structure change. The modifications led to surface roughness decrease, which is of great importance for further thin film composite (TFC) membranes fabrication by dense selective layer coating, and also reduced water and ethylene glycol contact angle values for modified hollow fibers surface. Furthermore, the membranes surface energy increased two-fold. The Piranha mixture chemical modification did not change the membranes average pore size and gas permeance values, while air plasma treatment increased pore size 1.5-fold and also 2 order enhanced membranes surface porosity. Since membranes surface porosity increased due to air plasma treatment the modified membranes were used as efficient supports for preparation of high permeance TFC membranes by using poly[1-(trimethylsilyl)-1-propyne] as an example for selective layer fabrication.