2022 Annual Meeting
(373f) Microwave-Assisted Nanoporous Multilayer Graphene Membrane with Ultrafast Organic Solvent Nanofiltration
Organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) technology has emerged due to its sustainability and cost-effectiveness in various industries for the purification and recovery of solvents. Graphene-based materials have been widely used for the OSN membrane owing to molecular sieving their interlayer structure and high stability in various solvents. However, the graphene-based membrane has suffered from low solvent flux by the narrow interlayer spacing for bulky organic solvent molecules. To enhance the solvent flux, a few approaches have been reported such as the use of nanomaterials, controlling interlayer spacing, and pore generation. Herein, we fabricated an sp2-introduced nanoporous graphene membrane for OSN. The nanopores were activated first by using thermal treatment of graphene oxide which results in a turbostratic sp3 carbon structure. Thereafter, the microwave treatment was used to introduce sp2 carbons on the nanoporous graphene sheets. The prepared membrane exhibited ultrafast solvent permeance up to 13117 Lm-2h-1bar-1 of acetone and high stability under the cross-flow system. In addition, the membrane performed switchable molecular sieving by differences in the swelling of graphene interlayer depending on solvents, which showed the capability of multiple chemicals separation for industries.