Preparation of hydrolysis of poly(acrylonitrile‐co‐methyl acrylate) membranes via thermally induced phase separation: Effects of hydrolysis conditions and additives

In this work, melt processable poly(acrylonitrile-co-methyl acrylate) [(P(AN-MA)] was hydrolyzed first and then formed into microporous membrane via thermally induced phase separation. In order to optimize the hydrolysis condition and fabricate hydrophilic PAN-based membranes, a series of hydrolysis experiments were performed to indicate the influence of hydrolysis temperature, alkaline species and time. The structure and properties of hydrolyzed P(AN-MA) [H-P(AN-MA)] membranes were also investigated. It was found that with the increase of hydrolysis temperature, pure water flux (PWF) increased first and then decreased. When the hydrolysis temperature increased to 30 °C, the PWF of the H-P(AN-MA) membrane was up to the maximum of 6712.7 L/m2 h, which increased by 1661.6 L/m2 h, compared with the P(AN-MA) membranes. When 1 wt % sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was incorporated into the diluents, the PWF increased dramatically, especially in high hydrolysis temperature. When the hydrolysis temperature was up to 70 °C, the PWF of H-P(AN-MA) membranes containing 1 wt % SDS increased by 2.3 times compared to the sample without SDS under the same condition. With 2 wt % amino functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs-NH2) employed as the additive, the tensile strength was up to 4.55 MPa. When 1 wt % SDS and 0.5 wt % MWCNTs-NH2 were mixed together, the bovine serum albumin rejection increased from 31.2% to 40.9%. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 46380.