Fabrication of a new type of polyvinyl alcohol/sulfosuccinic acid/glutaric anhydride cation exchange membrane for desalination using membrane capacitive deionization

Abstract

    Nowadays, the lack of clean water is becoming a serious problem, due to the increasing demand for clean water, along with global climate change. Desalination of sea water or brackish water has been considered as a practicable method to supply clean water. Among desalination technologies, membrane capacitive deionization has emerged for the last 15 years as an alternative method and received a lot of research attention since then. In this study, low-cost and ecofriendly polyvinyl alcohol/sulfosuccinic acid/glutaric anhydride composite membranes were fabricated through the crosslinking reaction of sulfosuccinic acid and glutaric anhydride with polyvinyl alcohol. The effect of sulfosuccinic acid and glutaric anhydride content was investigated. The presence of SSA in the cation exchange membrane, which was proven by FT-IR, helps improve its water uptake (98.5 % compared to 38.2 %) as well as cation exchange capacity (1.993 mM/g compared to 0.156 mM/g). The polyvinyl alcohol/sulfosuccinic acid/glutaric anhydride composite solution was coated on the electrode, and the membrane's ability to desalinate water was assessed. The membrane-coated electrode exhibited enhanced salt adsorption capacity and shorter desalination time (13.4 minutes compared to 85.3 minutes) in comparison with the uncoated commercial electrode, indicating that the polyvinyl alcohol/sulfosuccinic acid/glutaric anhydride membrane is a suitable candidate to be utilized in the membrane capacitive deionization systems.