Impregnated electrospun nanofibrous membranes for water vapour transport applications

Abstract Membranes with high water vapour permeance and selectivity find many end uses including protective clothing, dehydration, and humidification. One application for water vapour transport membranes is in energy recovery ventilators (ERVs) for buildings. These devices improve building energy efficiency by transporting heat and moisture between incoming and outgoing air streams in building ventilation systems, effectively ‘recycling’ the energy used to condition the indoor air. Membranes for these devices must have high vapour permeance, and selectivity for water vapour over other gases and contaminants that may be present in the exhaust indoor air. Due to the high rates of water vapour transport required in these gas to gas devices, boundary layer and internal resistances within the membrane contribute significantly to performance. Commercially available membranes suffer from high water vapour transport resistance in the microporous substrate support layer. In this study we report the fabrication of novel impregnated electrospun nanofibrous membranes (IENM) for water vapour transport applications. Electrospun nanofibre layers are impregnated with a polyether–polyurethane solution and cured to create continuous thin impregnated fibre loaded film layers which are bound to a non-woven support layer. These membranes have high water vapour permeance and selectivity while eliminating the requirement for a microporous support layer which has high vapour transport resistance. Here we report initial studies on how controllable factors in the membrane fabrication (namely fibre loading and impregnated solution polymer solids concentration) affect structural and permeation properties of IENMs created. Membranes with adequate permeance and selectivity are demonstrated and direction for optimization is identified. We find that the nanofibre loading has a significant impact on water vapour permeability as the membrane thickness decreases. Future work will study how modifications to the geometric and structural properties of the fibres affect the membrane performance.