Tailor-made membranes for alcohol/water pervaporation and ion separation prepared upon layer-by-layer adsorption of polyelectrolytes

Abstract

The paper is concerned with separating membranes prepared upon layer-by-layer adsorption of cationic and anionic polyelectrolytes on a porous substructure. The use of the resulting composite membranes for alcohol/water separation under pervaporation conditions, and for the separation of mono- and divalent ions is described. It is demonstrated that a suitable choice of the polyelectrolytes and the optimisation of the preparation conditions allow to tailor membranes with excellent separation capability.