Advances in membrane materials: desalination membranes based on directly copolymerized disulfonated poly(arylene ether sulfone) random copolymers

Abstract

The water and salt transport properties of chlorine tolerant disulfonated poly(arylene ether sulfone) (BPS) copolymers have been characterized. Cast BPS membranes of both salt form and acid form with sulfonation levels from 20% to 40% were investigated. Water permeability of BPS films increases more than one order of magnitude as sulfonation level increases from 20% to 40%, while the salt permeability of the corresponding membranes increases two orders of magnitude. Moderate salt rejection (98.2%) was achieved by a BPS salt form membrane with a sulfonation level of 20%.

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) (Grant # N00014-05-1-0771 and Grant # N00014-05-1-0772) and the National Science Foundation/Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Program (Grant # IIP-0650277).