Modification Of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes For Pervaporation Nanocomposite Membrane
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Date
2011-02
Authors
Ong, Yit Thai
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Owing to its low energy consumption, operational simplicity and ease of control, pervaporation has gained increasing interest in membrane separation technology. Due to the requirement of high performance pervaporation membrane and the emergence of biodegradable polymer, chitosan has become one of the most studied biodegradable pervaporation membrane. Unfortunately, the pure chitosan membrane often suffers from low selectivity caused by excessive swelling. In this research work, it is proposed to incorporated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) into chitosan matrix as an outcome to reduce the excessive swelling behaviour of chitosan. Producing a high quality MWCNT/chitosan nanocomposite membrane becomes a daunting task as it requires a homogenous dispersion of MWCNTs in uniform orientation. Therefore, the present research work focus on functionalized the MWCNTs with poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), a biodegradable polymer which is miscible with chitosan in order to increase the compatibility and dispersion of MWCNTs in chitosan matrix. The result from thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that about 40 wt.% of PHB has been successfully attached to MWCNTs by wrapping on their surface. As to optimize the reinforcing effect from functionalized MWCNT (PHB-MWCNT), it was bulk aligned using simple filtration method. The bulk alignment is found to offer advantages in reducing the amount of MWCNTs required in achieving desired mechanical properties.
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Keywords
Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes , Pervaporation Nanocomposite Membrane