Calculation on phase diagrams of polyetherimide/N,N-dimethylacetamide/H2O-BuOH casting system and their relevance to membrane performances

The ternary phase diagrams of polyetherimide (PEI)/ N,N -dimethylacetamide (DMAc) with H 2 O and BuOH as non-solvent were simulated using solubility parameter and Flory-Huggins theory. The phase diagrams show that 5.5% H 2 O/BuOH system containing 5% BuOH and 0.5% H 2 O, or 6.5% H 2 O/BuOH system containing 6.2% BuOH and 0.3% H 2 O is required to induce liquid-liquid demixing for 20 wt-% PEI/DMAc casting solution. Therefore, BuOH can enhance the phase separation of the PEI casting solution and hereby induce higher porosity of the membrane, and the diffusion of BuOH into the water coagulation bath causes larger pore size easily compared with DMAc. Our predictions that the membrane pure water flux first increases then decreases, and the rejection ratio of bovine serum albumin decreases with the increasing concentration of BuOH were validated by the experiments using the prepared membranes.