In order to control the surface pore sizes of polyvinylidene fluoride membranes and their distribution, low temperature plasma-induced grafting modifications of PVDF were studied to prepare hydrophobe membranes. By argon （Ar） treating and subsequent grafting reaction, a hydrophobe monomer, styrene, was introduced into the PVDF membrane. Fourier transform infrared attenuated total reflection （FTIR-ATR） was utilized to characterize the chemical and physical changes in the Ar plasma modified membrane. The surface modifications of PVDF membranes were investigated by using scanning electron microscopy （SEM）, atomic force microscopy （AFM） and differential scanning calorimeter （DSC）. The water permeability and the solute rejection were measured by PVDF membrane modified in different graft conditions. Results demonstrated that the pores in the modified membranes get smaller and the distribution of pores gets narrowed with the increase in grafting reaction duration. Longer graft time caused the water flux of PVDF membrane to decrease from 578 kg/（m^2· h） to 23 kg/（m^2· h） and the solute rejection to increase from 73% to 92%.
Ultra-fine silicalite-1 particles were modified with four kinds of chlorosilanes （dodecyltrichlorosilane, octyltrichlorosilane, hexadecyltrichlorosilane and octadecyltrichlorosilane） and characterized by FI-IR, TGA, contact angle measurements and BET analysis. It was found that the surface hydrophobicity of silicalite-1 particles was improved significantly as the alkyl group was strongly bonded to the particle surface. Modified silicalite-1 particles were incorporated into PDMS （poly（dimethylsiloxanediol）） membranes, which were applied for the pervaporation separation of ethanol/water mixtures. The effect of surface properties, zeolite loading and operation conditions on pervaporation performance of the membranes was investigated. The separation factor of PDMS membranes filled with modified silicalite-1 increased considerably compared with that filled with unmodified ones, and the total flux decreased with increasing zeolite loading. The solution and diffusion selectivity of hybrid membranes were also measured to explain the pervaporation properties of silicalite-1 filled PDMS membranes. It was found that modification of silicalite-1 with dodecyltrichlorosilane effectively improved the solution and diffusion selectivity of silicalite-1 filled PDMS membranes with high zeolite loading. This may be attributed to the high surface hydrophobicity of modified silicalite-1 and its good integration with PDMS membranes. Both the high separation factor and solution selectivity indicated that modification of silicalite-1 with chlorosilanes was an effective method to improve the selectivity of silicalite-1/PDMS hybrid membranes for ethanol.
Thin-film zeolite-filled silicone/PVDF composite membranes were fabricated by incorporating zeolite particles into PDMS(poly(dimethylsiloxane)) membranes.The morphology of zeolite particles and zeolite filled silicone composite membranes were characterized by SEM.The zeolite-filled PDMS/PVDF composite membranes were applied for the pervaporation of ethanol/water mixtures and showed higher flux compared with that reported in literatures.The effect of zeolite loading and Si/Al ratio of zeolite particles on pe...
