Preparation of solvent resistant supports through formation of a semi-interpenetrating polysulfone/polyacrylate network using UV cross-linking – Part 1: Selection of optimal UV curing conditions

Abstract As the number of membrane applications in industrial processes keeps increasing, more and more attention is being paid to their physical and chemical stability. Especially during cleaning procedures and under actual operation conditions the lack of a sufficient stability still remains an issue thereby seriously limiting the membrane lifetime and increasing the operating cost. Currently, different methods are applied during the synthesis to improve the stability of polymeric membranes. One promising method to produce solvent resistant membranes (in this specific case supports) is by cross-linking polymeric membranes via photo-irradiation. In this study, three different UV curing conditions (e.g. UV – spark, UV – microwave and UV – LED) were studied in depth by evaluating the cross-linker conversion degree with infra-red spectroscopy. Ultimately the 365 nm UV-LED light was selected as the most optimal UV curing condition. This unit is further used to study the optimal compositional and non-compositional parameters to produce solvent resistant supports in a continuous membrane casting line for up-scaling.