Development of chitosan-based blend hollow fiber membranes for adsorptive separation in environmental engineering and bioengineering applications

Abstract

In recent years, porous adsorptive membrane with surface functionality has emerged as an efficient separation medium for applications in such as removing heavy metal ions from water or concentrating valuable biomolecules from fermentation broth. One of the challenges in adsorptive membrane separation technology is to develop membranes with microporous structures and high density of adsorptive sites. In this study, novel adsorptive hollow fiber membranes were developed from biopolymer chitosan and cellulose acetate blends. Chitosan (CS) acted as the functional polymer to provide surface reactivity and cellulose acetate (CA) as the matrix polymer to acquire the necessary mechanical strength. Processes were successfully developed to prepare CS/CA blends and spin CS/CA blend hollow fiber membranes. Spinning factors were varied to prepare membranes with a variety of porous structures. The blend hollow fiber membranes were examined for adsorptive separation of both small ions such as heavy metals and large molecules such as proteins.