Evaluation of radiation prepared polyele¬ctrolyte membranes for possible use in industrial applications

Abstract

In this work, attempts have been made to synthesize and characterize functionalized polymer to act as polyelectrolyte membranes to be use in different applications such as microbial fuel cell, direct glycerol fuel cell and microbial desalination fuel cell. A trial has been made on the optimization of the reaction parameters including effect of solvent, effect of comonomer concentration, effect of comonomer composition and irradiation dose for production of the proposed polymeric membranes. In this connection, commercially available inert polymer low density polyethylene was radiation grafted with glycidyl methacrylate and vinyl acetate to prepare cation exchange membrane and dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate to prepare anion exchange membrane by means of gamma radiations, as a source of initiation and copolymerization to obtain the copolymer of required properties.

Part (I): Radiation induced graft copolymerization of glycidyal metha crylate-co-vinyl acetate onto low density polyethylene sheets to prepared cation exchange membrane for microbial fuel cell application The obtained results are summarized in the following: - Optimization of radiation grafting conditions shows that; acetone is the best solvent among other solvents used and show that the grafting degree increases with the increase in comonomer concentration in feed solution as well as the glycidyl methacrylate content in feed solution and radiation dose. - FT-IR spectroscopic analysis of LDPE-g-P (GMA-co-VAc) has confirmed the presence of the characteristic bands of VAc and GMA. - Chemical modification of grafted sheets was characterized by FT-IR and the obtained result confirmed the achievement of the chemical conversion of the epoxide group in to sulfonate groups. - The sulfonation kinetics of PGMA chains showed that the optimal sulfonation time was 16 h whereas the sulfonation density increases as the grafting degree increase. - The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed the change in surface morphology of the LDPE-g-P (GMA-co-VAc) in response to the change in the degree of grafting as well as sulfonation treatment.