The swelling behavior and wet morphology of water-absorbable polymer materials

In this research work, a low-temperature examination method for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is introduced. A water-absorbable polymer material, the sulfonated polyethylene (SPE) ion-exchange hollow fiber membrane, was used for the experiments. With this low-temperature technique, the wet morphology of the water-absorbable sulfonated polyethylene hollow fiber membrane was revealed. The results obtained from this investigation offer some important information to explain the behavior of the SPE hollow fiber membranes when they are applied in pervaporation separation of water/organic solvent mixtures, such as water/ethylene glycol, water/ethanol, and so forth.