The thermally induced phase separation(TIPS) method offers higher reproducibility with lower tendency for defect formation and narrower pore size distribution, rendering the method more suitable for microfiltration(MF) and ultrafiltration(UF) applications. PVDF is widely used in membrane technology due to their excellent chemical resistance and strong mechanical properties. In case of MF and UF applications, the stretching method has been applied for increasing the performance of membrane by extending pore size. In this work, the effects of dope and bore flow rates and dope composition on the tensile strength of membranes was investigated. A design of experiment(DOE) analysis was used to understand the effects of the stretching parameters such as temperature, stretching ratio and holding time on the membrane performance.

Since Loeb and Sourirajan has introduced phase inversion method for membrane fabrication, the phase separation technique became the mainstream of membrane fabrication methods. Phase inversion includes solvent evaporation, vapor induced phase separation, thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) and nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS). Among those, NIPS and TIPS process is widely studied and employed for membrane fabrication. Depending on the membrane fabrication processes such as NIPS and TIPS, corresponding morphology differs from macrovoid structure to spherulitic structure, respectively. In this presentation, comparison of NIPS and TIPS effect on the final membrane morphology and controlling the membrane morphology by tuning the NIPS and TIPS effect will be presented.

Membrane distillation (MD) has been researched as one of the promising seawater desalination processes, because of its advantages such as (1) high energy efficiency, high water flux and less fouling sensitivity. [1] Herein, thermally rearranged (TR) polymer membranes are introduced for MD application. The TR membranes were investigated by SEM, contact angle, CFP and LEPw. TR membranes showed a great MD performance with high water flux and long-term stability.

Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a next generation of desalination technique to resolve the limitation of RO process. In this study, Polybenzoxazoles(PBO) membrane via thermally rearrangement of polyimide containing hydroxyl groups was prepared [1]. The effect of operating conditions such as feed temperature, Reynolds number of feed flow and salt concentration of feed were investigated. TR polymer membranes were characterized by SEM, AFM and contact angle. Thermally rearranged polymers showed a potential to MD process with advantages of high flux and long-term stability during operation.