Hydroxyhexafluoroisopropylnorbornene-Butylnorbornene Block and Random Copolymer Membranes For the Pervaporation of Alcohol Biofuels

Abstract

Block and random copolymers derived from norbornene monomers bearing hydroxyhexafluoroisopropyl and n-butyl substituents (HFANB and BuNB) and synthesized via living vinyl addition polymerization were previously shown to be successful for the recovery of n-butanol from a 1 wt.% aqueous solution when used as the selective layer of thin-film composite (TFC) pervaporation membranes. In this thesis, I investigated the application of these copolymer membranes towards the pervaporation of other binary and quaternary biofuel alcohol-water mixtures, e.g., isobutanol, ethanol, and acetone-butanol-ethanol at a variety of organic feed concentrations. Membranes were found to be most successful for the separation of n-butanol. Furthermore, membrane pervaporation performance was found to be comparable to that of commercial PDMS membranes across all alcohol types, thus proving the potential for high-Tg norbornene copolymers as next-generation pervaporation membranes.