Characterizing water transport in ultrathin desalination membranes using Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation

Published

January 19, 2015

Author(s)

Nichole Nadermann, Edwin P. Chan, Christopher M. Stafford

Abstract

We study the water transport and swelling properties of an ultrathin polyamide selective layer with a hydroxyl-rich polymer coating, i.e., a polymer bilayer, using quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D). Specifically, we use QCM-D to measure the dynamic and equilibrium change in mass in a series of differential sorption experiments to determine the dependence of the effective diffusion coefficient and equilibrium swelling of the bilayer as a function of the water vapor activity. We apply a bilayer mass transport model to deconvolute the contributions of the polyamide selective layer and the hydroxyl-rich coating to the mass sorption kinetics obtained from QCM-D. We show that the swelling and water diffusion coefficients can be described according to the Painter-Shenoy polymer network swelling model and the solution-diffusion model, respectively.

Citation

ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces

Volume

7

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

Bilayer mass transport, Coating, Desalination, Diffusion, Polyamide, QCM-D, Reverse Osmosis

Citation

Nadermann, N. , Chan, E. and Stafford, C. (2015), Characterizing water transport in ultrathin desalination membranes using Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/am507091s (Accessed October 18, 2025)