Abstract
Due to the chemical structure of the perfluoro group, perfluoro-polymers, such as polytetrafluoroethylene and poly(tetrafluoroethylene-co-hexafluoropropylene) (FEP) deserves excellent properties of outstanding thermal and chemical resistance and strong hydrophobicity. In this study, FEP hybrid flat-sheet membranes were fabricated by the melt-compressed membrane formation system, which composed of FEP, micro-scale SiO2, and Dioctyl-Phthalate (DOP). Effects of DOP and SiO2 contents on the membrane morphologies and properties were investigated, respectively. The membranes’ corresponding microfiltration performances were characterized in terms of pure water flux, mechanical strength, membrane porosity, and vacuum membrane distillation (VMD). Results illustrated that the obtained FEP flat-sheet membranes displayed a typical asymmetric structure. There were obvious enhancement of membrane’s pure water flux and porosity with increasing DOP and SiO2 contents. The salt rejections achieved as high as 99.9% by VMD process.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21404079, 51273147), Tianjin Scientific and Technology Program (No. 12JCZDJC26600).