Pervaporation separation of water/alcohol mixtures through hydroxypropylated chitosan membranes

The present study investigated the pervaporation performance of novel hydroxypropylated chitosan (HPCS) membranes to separate water from an aqueous alcohol solution. Hydroxypropylated chitosan was prepared from the reaction of chitosan and propylene oxide. The results show that the separation factor decreases and the flux increases with increasing of the substitution degree of the hydroxypropylated chitosan membrane. Crosslinking with glutaraldehyde or treatment with CU2+ can improve the pervaporation performance of modified chitosan membrane grately. The performance data indicate that the crosslinking hydroxypropylated chitosan membrane treated with Cu2+ is an excellent pervaporation membrane for the separation of alcohol-water mixtures, and one-stage separation is attainable for some alcohol-water mixtures such as an n-propanol-water and an isopropanol-water system, which has a good separation factor of 220 for the n-PrOH/water system and 240 for the i-PrOH/water system using 85 wt % alcohol concentration at 60 degrees C. The flux for both cases is around 0.5 kg m(-2) h(-1). At the same time, the structure of the chemically modified chitosan membranes and their separation characteristics for aqueous alcohol solutions are also discussed. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.