Effect of physical and mechanical properties of PU biopolymer membranes upon use of different fabrication techniques

• Main Author: Abd Rahim, Rahimah
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: TP155-156 Chemical engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/2107/1/24p%20RAHIMAH%20ABD%20RAHIM.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/2107/3/RAHIMAH%20ABD%20RAHIM%20COPYRIGHT%20DECLARATION.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/2107/2/RAHIMAH%20ABD%20RAHIM%20WATERMARK.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/2107/
• Institution: Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia

In developing polymer membranes that response to prevents liquid water from penetrating through, while at the same time permitting moisture past out through, polymer membrane with various structure ranging from dense to highly asymmetric morphologies (0.01 - 0.25 mm) were fabricated through three different techniques; blends, curing and grafting fabrication. From FT-IR analysis, BP/PEG (blends, curing and grafting) were fully converted into solid polymer membrane with functional group of N-H stretching in region 3350 - 3250 cm-1. Morphological result of BP/PEG shows three types of surface; open, close and blind surface with cylindrical blind and ink bottle shaped structure randomly. Due to lower porosity of skin over a symmetric support acts as a barrier, BP/PEG polymer membranes resultant no water permeability as compared to BP/DMF, which exhibit extremely higher water permeability with value 0.161 L/s.m3 at lower concentration. Water absorption analysis shows that mechanical properties of the prepared membranes were significantly influenced by their structure and amount of water absorbed. Thus, BP/PEG (blends, curing and grafting) preparation gave lower amount of water absorption with less than 0.01% water absorption increment rather than BP/DMF 12% (w/v) with highly porosity value of 0.07%. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) reviewed that the hard segment decomposition temperature was occur at 295 0C – 395 0C, meanwhile for soft segment at 370 0C – 500 0C. Based upon modulus, tensile, strain and tear strength also energy at break, evidently shows that the BP/PEG (grafting) method gave the best performance on physical and mechanical properties with highest mean value of 12419 N/mm, 14.11 MPa, 38.289 %, 50.67 N/mm and 21.627 N respectively. Reciprocally, PEG solvent does significantly increase the mechanical properties with the reaction of BP rather than DMF solvent with varieties of concentration. Moreover, BP/PEG membrane from each fabrication technique had obvious dense porous structural feature with open, close and blind pores in practically boundless development as of adequate final use in membrane application.