Enhancement of Physical Characteristics of Styrene–Acrylonitrile Nanofiber Membranes Using Various Post-Treatments for Membrane Distillation

Insufficient mechanical strength and wide pore size distribution of nanofibrous membranes are the key hindrances for their concrete applications in membrane distillation. In this work, various post-treatment methods such as dilute solvent welding, vapor welding, and cold-/hot-pressing processes were used to enhance the physical properties of styrene–acrylonitrile (SAN) nanofiber membranes fabricated by the modified electrospinning process. The effects of injection rate of welding solution and a working distance during the welding process with air-assisted spraying on characteristics of SAN nanofiber membranes were investigated. The welding process was made less time-consuming by optimizing system parameters of the electroblowing process to simultaneously exploit residual solvents of fibers and hot solvent vapor to reduce exposure time. As a result, the welded SAN membranes showed considerable enhancement in mechanical robustness and membrane integrity with a negligible reduction in surface hydrophobicity. The hot-pressed SAN membranes obtained the highest mechanical strength and smallest mean pore size. The modified SAN membranes were used for the desalination of synthetic seawater in a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD). As a result, it was found that the modified SAN membranes performed well (>99.9% removal of salts) for desalination of synthetic seawater (35 g/L NaCl) during 30 h operation without membrane wetting. The cold-/hot-pressing processes were able to improve mechanical strength and boost liquid entry pressure (LEP) of water. In contrast, the welding processes were preferred to increase membrane flexibility and permeation.

Miscibility and Phase Separation in PMMA/SAN Blends Investigated by Nanoscale AFM-IR

The miscibility and phase separation of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) have already been investigated using various methods. However, these methods have limitations that often result in inconsistent characterization. Consequently, the reasons for the dependence of miscibility on composition as well as on processing temperature have not yet been proved. The phase separation of PMMA/SAN blends was therefore investigated for the first time using a novel technique, nanoscale AFM-IR. It couples nanoscale atomic force microscopy (AFM) with infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Therefore, the phase morphology can be chemically identified and precisely classified within the nm-regime. The PMMA/SAN blends, on the other hand, were analyzed of their changes in morphology under different thermal treatments. It was possible to visualize and define the phase separation, as well as dependence of the miscibility on the mixing ratio. In the miscible domain, no two individual phases could be detected down to the nanometer range. It was shown that with increasing temperature, the morphology changes and two different phases are formed, where the phase boundaries can be sharply defined. The onset of these changes could be identified at temperatures of about 100 °C.