Cellulose-Based Membranes for Solutes Fractionation

This work was focused on investigation of industrial cellophane film as a membrane material for solvent nanofiltration. The effect of conditioning of cellophane membranes by stepwise changing of composition of ethanol-water binary mixtures (from ethanol to water and from water to ethanol) was studied. It was shown that such treatment leads to an increase of ethanol permeability more than two orders of magnitude over initial untreated film samples. Treated cellophane membranes possess the ethanol permeability coefficient comparable with the values for highly permeability glassy polymers. Investigation of cellophane swelling in water ethanol solutions allowed to conclude that during the treatment formation of porous in the film takes place due to increase of inter chain distances. Observed high ethanol permeability connected with the fact that formed porous structure remains after the replacement of water with ethanol. Also it was shown that rejection coefficients of a number of dyes (MW 350) were in good agreement with the degree of hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity and ability of the solvent to form hydrogen bonding with the solute molecules. It was demonstrated that cellulose-based membranes can be complimentary for other type of the membranes in fractionation of multi-components solutions.