Polyethersulfone Nanofiltration Membrane Incorporated with Silicon Dioxide Prepared by Phase Inversion Method for Xylitol Purification

Xylitol purity is essential for a high value product obtained from biomass fermentation. Common biomass fermentation from sugar cane bagasse, corncobs or rice husk source in the presence of yeast produces xylitol mixture (containing xylose, arabinose), thus, various methods have been used for the purification such as crystallization and adsorption. However, membrane technique is of interest due to the operational simplicity and flexibility, relatively high selectivity and permeability for the transport of specific components. Nanofiltration (NF) membrane is targeted for the membrane application based on the ranges of molecular weight of the mixture components that fall in NF (between 200 to 2000 g/mol). In this paper, a new and efficient NF membrane used for purifying xylitol was synthesized from polyethersulfone (PES) and PES incorporated with silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanoparticles (NP) of 5 wt.% via phase inversion technique. These membranes have been characterized for their chemical, physical and morphological properties and their performances have been evaluated in the dead end filtration to obtain the pure water flux and filtration performance using xylitol mixture. EDX showed the presence of SiO2 NP on the membrane for PES/SiO2 membrane but none in PES membrane. The membrane permeation properties improved also when SiO2 has been incorporated to the PES membrane. The hydrophilicity of the PES/SiO2 membrane measured by contact angle improved from 79.7±0.65° to 59.1±0.15° for PES/SiO2 and PES membranes, respectively. The water flux has enhanced for PES/SiO2 membrane from 24.56 to 59.14 L/m2·h measured at 4 bar. Therefore, in terms of flux and contact angle, the synthesized membrane of PES/SiO2 was found to be more effective compared to pure PES membrane.