The effects of iCVD film thickness and conformality on the permeability and wetting of MD membranes
Name
The effects of iCVD film thickness and conformality on the permeability and wetting of MD membranes, Servi, Dspace.pdf
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1.61 MB
Format
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Guillen-Burrieza, Elena
Livernois, William
Notarangelo, Katie
Kharraz, Jehad
Arafat, Hassan A.
Gleason, Karen K.
Servi, Amelia T
Warsinger, David Elan Martin
Lienhard, John H.
Date Issued
October 2016
Journal
Journal of Membrane Science
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Servi, Amelia T.; Guillen-Burrieza, Elena; Warsinger, David M.; Livernois, William; Notarangelo, Katie; Kharraz, Jehad; Lienhard V, John H.; Arafat, Hassan A. and Gleason, Karen K. “The Effects of iCVD Film Thickness and Conformality on the Permeability and Wetting of MD Membranes.” Journal of Membrane Science 523 (February 2017): 470–479. © The Authors
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Membranes possessing high permeability to water vapor and high liquid entry pressure (LEP) are necessary for efficient membrane distillation (MD) desalination. A common technique to prepare specialized MD membranes consists of coating a hydrophilic or hydrophobic base membrane with a low surface-energy material. This increases its liquid entry pressure, making the membrane suitable for MD. However, in addition to increasing LEP, the surface-coating may also decrease permeability of the membrane by reducing its average pore size. In this study, we quantify the effects of initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) polymer coatings on membrane permeability and LEP. We consider whether the iCVD films should have minimized thickness or maximized non-conformality, in order to maximize the permeability achieved for a given value of LEP. We determined theoretically that permeability of a single pore is maximized with a highly non-conformal iCVD coating. However, the overall permeability of a membrane consisting of many pores is maximized when iCVD film thickness is minimized. We applied the findings experimentally, preparing an iCVD-treated track-etched polycarbonate (PCTE) membrane and testing it in a permeate gap membrane distillation (PCMD) system. This study focuses on membranes with clearly defined, cylindrical pores. However, we believe that the principles we discuss will extend to membranes with more complex pore architectures. Overall, this work indicates that the focus of surface-coating development should be on minimizing film thickness, not on increasing their non-conformality.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2016.10.008
