LAUSR

ABSTRACT As a rising membrane separation technology, pervaporation (PV) has been regarded as one of the most promising separation technology applied in separation of azeotropic mixtures due to its high selectivity and low energy consumption. In a PV process, separation process mainly occurs in the PV membrane, so it is of significance to develop a membrane with high performance. Room temperature vulcanised (RTV) silicone rubber is a kind of membrane material possessing good hydrophobicity and low glass transition temperature. It is widely used in the recovery of organic compounds from their dilute aqueous solutions. In this paper, RTV silicone rubber membranes were fabricated by a typical one-pot method and characterised by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, water contacting angle, differential scanning calorimetry, scanning electron microscopy and swelling experiment. The membranes were used in PV recovery of n-butanol from its dilute aqueous solution (about 1 wt-%). The influences of temperature and cross-linkers on the performance of PV were discussed at the same time. In conclusion, RTV silicone rubber membrane cross-linked by vinyltrimethoxysilane (WD-21), which obtained membrane selectivity of 82.9 with butanol permeability of 1.1 × 106 Barrer at 50°C, got the best performance.