(53c) Novel Cellulose Esters for Forward Osmosis Membranes

In view of the tremendous efforts for the invention of materials and techniques for forward osmosis (FO) membrane fabrication, in this work, we focused our study in the use of novel cellulose ester materials for FO membrane fabrication. A wide range of cellulose esters with different degree of distributions (DS) of different functional groups which include hydroxyl (OH), acetyl (Ac), propionyl (Pr) and butyryl (Bu) groups were specially synthesized for this study. The effects of DS of functional groups of the cellulose esters have on the resultant membranes’ morphology and performance were carefully studied. The resultant membranes have distinguished morphology and these cellulose esters exhibited distinguished membrane performance under forward osmosis process due to their differences in the functional group distribution. Fundamental properties such as water permeability, water solubility, salt partition coefficient and salt permeability of each cellulose ester were characterized to determine the effects of functional group distributions on the membrane performance. This study showed that desired membrane performance can be achieved by altering the DS of various functional groups for cellulose esters.