Abstract
In recent years, an increasing interest in membrane technology has been observed in chemical and environmental industry. Membrane technology has advantages of low cost, energy saving and environmental clean technology comparing to conventional separation processes. Pervaporation is one of new advanced membrane technology applied for separation of azeotropic mixtures, aqueous organic mixtures, organic solvent and petrochemical mixtures. Sodium alginate composite membranes were prepared for the enhancement of long-term stability of pervaporation performance of water-ethanol mixture using pervaporation. Sodium alginate membranes were crosslinked with CaCl$_2$ and coated with polyelectrolyte chitosan to protect washing out of calcium ions from the polymer. The surface structures of PAN and hydrolysed PAN membrane were confirmed by ATR Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR). A field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM; Jeol 6340F) operated at 15 kV. Concentration profiles for Ca in the membrane surface and membrane cross-section were taken by an energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyser (Jeol) attached to the field emission scanning electron microscopy (Jeol 6340F). Pervaporation experiments were done with several operation run times to investigate long-term stability of the membranes.
