Abstract
Low hydrophilicity of membranes is probably the biggest concern in membrane filtration since it increases the costs for water treatment. Conversely, application of hydrophilic biopolymers (such as cellulose) is limited because of its complex and crystalline structure. Enabling the wide use of the most common biopolymer in nature is crucial to improve the performance of water treatment, especially in terms of membrane sustainability. Here, we study the effect of cellulose dissolution in the synthesis of homogeneous PVDF/cellulose membranes. Although only partial dissolution was achieved for studied samples, adding cellulose to the membranes greatly improved their water flux. Besides, the porous structure obtained after partial solvent removal indicates the water flux (and consequently the pore size) may be tailored according to the membrane production method. Therefore, the homogeneous cellulose microfiltration membranes studied here may have potential for water treatment considering their high-water flux and low complexity to produce.
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Funding
The authors would like to thank Universidade Positivo, Embrapa Florestas and Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, for financially supporting this work, and we also thank Dr. Laura Karam for granting access to the spray-drier at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUC-PR), the Physics Department at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR – for the XRD analyzes) and the Chemical and Surface Analysis lab at Technion (SEM analyzes). We would like to thank specially Dr. Moris Eisen and Msc. Inbal Ozeri for the scientific cooperation that resulted in the development of this work funded by Capes.
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Malucelli, L.C., Ozeri, I., Matos, M. et al. High-flux, porous and homogeneous PVDF/cellulose microfiltration membranes. Cellulose 29, 1943–1953 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04422-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04422-y