Highly conductive anion exchange membranes with low water uptake and performance evaluation in electrodialysis

The present work reports the preparation of a series of novel highly durable imidazolium-decorated anion exchange membranes (AEMs), with 3D network structure, via ultraviolet crosslinking reaction between 1-vinylimidazole and 1,6-hexanedithiol. AEM modified with trimethylamine (TMA) groups (no crosslinking, 45.7%) showed a significantly reduced water uptake within a range of 14.4–23.6% at 80 °C. Due to relatively good alkali-resistant of imidazolium groups and the compact structure stemmed from crosslinking network, the optimum cross-linked AEM (BPPO-Im 0.3) can retard the degradation and exhibits superior alkaline stability in 1.0 M NaOH at 60 °C for over 15 days, compared with TMA modified AEM. In ED application, BPPO-Im 0.3 AEM has a higher NaCl removal ratio of 77.82% than that of commercial AEM-Type II (74.13%) within 3 h experimental time. Accordingly, it shows higher current efficiency (67.43%) and lower energy consumption (1.94 kWh kg −1 NaCl), compared to commercial one (62.83%; 2.05 kWh kg −1 ). The facile fabrication process and the better-performance are suggestive of that BPPO-Im 0.3 is potentially applicable in ED.