Towards the synthesis of greener membranes: interest of PVA as porous support for membrane application in gas and liquid separations

Abstract Most of the porous supports are prepared by phase inversion method by using classical and toxic solvents: NMP, DMF, THF, DMSO, … These supports present 95–99% of total thickness and the active layer presents only 0.1 1–3 µm. It is necessary to find new green method and material to prepare these supports. This paper describes the possibility to use a biodegradable polymer polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to prepare porous support by using water as a solvent and aqueous or alcohol solutions as a coagulation bath. The SEM microscope is used to study the influence of the composition of polymer solution and the coagulation bath on the structure of prepared membrane. In addition, the life cycle assessment (LCA) tool is used to evaluate the environmental impacts for different preparations and compared with others from bibliography. Finally, a membrane with PVA dense and porous structure was prepared.