Effect of temperature and salt on PVDF membrane wetting properties

Abstract

Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally driven separation process. Despite many advantages over other membrane separation processes, pore wetting hampers the wide commercial applications of the MD process. In this paper, the effect of temperature and presence (or absence) of salt in the feed solution on the wetting properties of commercial polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane during a period of eight weeks was investigated. Liquid entry pressure (LEP) and water contact angle (WCA) were employed to characterize the wetting properties of the PVDF membrane. The result shows that the temperature has a significant impact on the decrease of the contact angle of the PVDF membrane.