Preparation and performance of braid‐reinforced poly(vinyl chloride) hollow fiber membranes

A novel braid‐reinforced (BR) poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) hollow fiber membrane was fabricated via dry‐wet spinning process. The mixtures of PVC polymer solutions were uniformly coated on the tubular braid which contained polyester (PET) and polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers. The influences of braid composition on structure and performance of BR PVC hollow fiber membranes were investigated. The results showed that the prepared BR PVC hollow fiber membranes were composed of two layers which contained separation layer and tubular braid supported layer when the PET and PET/PAN hybrid tubular braids were used as the reinforcement. But the sandwich structure appeared when the PAN tubular braid was used as the reinforcement, which revealed outer separation layer, tubular braid supported layer and the inner polymer layer. The BR PVC hollow fiber membranes that prepared by PET/PAN hybrid tubular braid had favorable interfacial bonding state compared with the membrane prepared by pure PET or PAN tubular braid. The pure water flux of the BR PVC hollow fiber membranes that prepared by the PET/PAN hybrid tubular braid were lower than that prepared by pure PET or PAN tubular braid, but the rejection of Bovine serum albumin was opposite. The tensile strength of prepared BR PVC hollow fiber membrane was higher than 50 MPa. Both of the tensile strength and elongation at break decreased with the increase of the PAN filaments in the PET/PAN hybrid tubular braid. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 45068.