A novel organic solvent nanofiltration membrane prepared via green mild and simple crosslinking process

Organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) is a new type of organic fluid separation technology that can greatly reduce energy consumption compared with traditional distillation techniques. However, the development and application of OSN are restricted by the high manufacturing cost of solvent resistant membranes, including expensive materials and complex post-treatment process. In this paper, a low-cost polyaryletherketone bearing amino group synthesized from industrial raw material phenolphthalein was proposed, and then the crosslinked polyaryletherketone membrane with remarkable stability in polar aprotic solvent was prepared by green, mild and simple crosslinking method. The separation accuracy of the membrane can be easily adjusted from ultrafiltration to nanofiltration by altering the composition of the cast solution. In addition, the prepared membrane can be operated in DMF for 120 h, which indicated the excellent stability of the membrane, even for hash polar aprotic solvents. Therefore, this work demonstrates a novel low-cost solvent resistant membrane material that is promising for OSN applications.