Responsive Amphiphilic Polymers and Membranes for Water Remediation

摘要

During the past year our group has demonstrated that polymer enhanced ultrafiltration may be utilized to effectively remove organic foulants from a wastewater stream. This technology is an advancement of micellar enhanced ultrafiltration that is commonly found in many remediation efforts. Micellar enhanced ultrafiltration is characterized by the addition of a small molecule surfactant to the aqueous stream containing an organic foulant. The foulant is solubilized within the micellar hydrophobic core and the stream is then passed through a microporous membrane, such that most of the organic solute and surfactant remain in the retentate. Although this method often achieves high efficiencies of removing a foulant, monomeric surfactant continuously crosses the membrane into the permeate. Therefore, added surfactant is required as time progresses to maintain a critical micelle concentration. In order to circumvent this problem, we have utilized a commercially available polymeric surfactant (Pluronic F127) as the solubilization agent. In this case, the size of the surfactant is sufficiently large to prevent passage through the membrane into the permeate and the addition of surfactant to the retentate is unnecessary. We have shown that the PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymer will associate with model water foulants in an ultrafiltration application such that this technology may be utilized in a closed system such as that would be required on a naval vessel.