Effects of solvent sort, PES and PVP concentration on the properties and morphology of PVDF/PES blend hollow fiber membranes

Poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)/polyethersulfone (PES) hollow-fiber membranes were spun by dry–wet spinning setup. PVDF and PES were employed as base polymers. Four different solvents including dimethyl sulphoxide, dimethyl formamide, 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, and dimethyl acetamide (DMAc) were used as the solvents. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) was used as pore-forming additive. The preparation variables in this work are sort of solvents, content ratio of PVDF/PES, and concentration of PVP. The membranes prepared by phase inversion were characterized by using scanning electron microscopy. Membrane performance was evaluated by shrinkage ratio, pure water flux and retention to bovine serum albumin (BSA). The shrinkage ratio of PVDF/PES blend hollow fiber membrane decreases when DMAc was used as a solvent. The pure water flux of blend membranes reaches the maximum and the retention to BSA reaches the minimum when the casting solution contains 1.5 wt % PES. The pure water flux reaches the maximum when the concentration of PVP is 5 wt %. The retention to BSA decreases and the shrinkage ratio increases with PVP concentration increasing. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010