Enhancing the stability of supported liquid membrane in phenols removal process by hydrophobic modification

Supported liquid membrane (SLM) has received great attention in recent years. However, very few SLM system could be amplified from the lab to large-scale applications due to insufficient membrane stability. In the present work, a facile surface modification tactic that focused on improving the hydrophobicity of polypropylene hollow fiber membrane (PP HEM), the support of SLM, by grafting heptadecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetradecyltrimethoxysilane (FAS) and SiO2 was studied. The influence of hydrophobic modification on the stability of SLM was investigated. The PP-HFM was characterized by SEM, ATR-FTIR and contact angle to test the effects of modification. The analysis results revealed the changes in the surface morphology, chemical composition and hydrophobicity of the membrane. Under optimum modified conditions (0.03 mol/L FAS and 0.15% SiO2), the contact angle increased greatly from 92.1 degrees to 132.2 degrees after modification. Therefore, the SLM with modified PP-HFM as the support showed significant enhancement in stability. The average phenol removal percentage could be maintained at 75.32% in 16 days of continuous pilot-scale experiments. (C) 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.