Effect of surfactant on morphology and pore size of polysulfone membrane

The skin layer structure can be changed by adjusting the diffusion rate of the non-solvent into the polymer solution between membrane and coagulation bath through adding surfactant into either coagulation bath or dope solution. When adding SDS in coagulation bath, the variation trend of apparent diffusion coefficient during phase separation and scanning electron microscopy morphology of resultant membranes indicated that, at the beginning SDS migrated to the membrane-bath interface during phase separation process, playing a role as mechanical barrier within 0.15 wt% SDS concentration. Once the SDS concentration exceeds CMC, the remaining SDS will form micelles act as a carrier, hence, the phase separation rate accelerated. The membranes were characterized roughness parameters, obtained by the atomic force microscopic technique. While adding surfactant in the dope solution, compared with SDS addition into the coagulation bath, apparent diffusion coefficient and SEM morphology showed the similar trend, and the excellent range of SDS concentration is 0.08 wt%-0.1 wt%. As changing the nature of surfactant in the dope solution, we found that, with the increase of surfactant hydrophile-lipophile balance (HLB) value, the rate of phase separation speeds up, the size of macrovoid increases, flux increases gradually and rejection is weakened.