LAUSR

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membranes are widely used for bioethanol separation. However, the network cavity size r3 of PDMS membranes is generally smaller than ethanol kinetic radius (0.225 nm), which limits the transport of ethanol molecules and weakens the pervaporation performance. Herein, we proposed a particle-driven, ultrafast-cured strategy to overcome the above key issue, i.e. (1) incorporating particles into PDMS for preventing polymer chains from packing tightly; (2) freezing particles within PDMS layer by the ultrafast UV-crosslinking for improving its distribution and increasing the chains extension of polymer; (3) covalently bonding particles with PDMS to enhance their compatibility. Consequently, r3 was increased to 0.262 nm, and an extremely high-loading membrane (50 wt%) with an ultrashort curing time (20 s) was prepared, which is difficult to be realized by the conventional thermal-driven approach. As a result, a separation factor of 13.4 with a total flux of 2207 g m-2 h-1 for separating ethanol from 5 wt% aqueous solution at 60 °C was obtained. This strategy shows the feasibility for the different bio-alcohols recovery and the large-scale continuous membrane preparation.