Crosslinked Nanocomposite Sodium Alginate-Based Membranes with Titanium Dioxide for the Dehydration of Isopropanol by Pervaporation

Sodium alginate (NaAlg) based membranes were prepared using a solution technique, crosslinked with poly(styrene sulfonic acid-co-maleic acid) (PSSA-co-MA). Subsequently, the membranes were modified by the incorporation of 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40% w/w of titanium dioxide with respect to sodium alginate. The membranes thus obtained were designated as M, M-1, M-2, M-3 and M-4, respectively. An equilibrium swelling experiment was performed using different compositions of the water and isopropanol mixtures. Subsequently, we used a pervaporation cell fitted with each membrane in order to evaluate the extent of the pervaporation dehydration of isopropanol. Among the membranes studied, the membranes containing 40 mass% of titanium dioxide exhibited the highest separation factor(α) of 24,092, with a flux(J) of 18.61 × 10(−2) kg/m(2)∙h at 30 °C for 10 mass% w/w of water in the feed. The total flux and the flux of water were found to overlap with each other, indicating that these membranes can be effectively used to break the azeotropic point of water–isopropanol mixtures. The results clearly indicate that these nanocomposite membranes exhibit an excellent performance in the dehydration of isopropanol. The activation energy values obtained for the water permeation were significantly lower than those of the isopropanol permeation, underlining that these membranes have a high separation ability for the water–isopropanol system. The estimated activation energies for total permeation (E(P)) and total diffusion (E(D)) values ranged between 10.60 kJ∙mol(−1) and 3.96 kJ∙mol(−1), and 10.76 kJ∙mol(−1) and 4.29 kJ∙mol(−1), respectively. The negative change in the enthalpy values for all the membranes indicates that sorption was mainly dominated by Langmuir’s mode of sorption.