Sustainable Fabrication of Solvent Resistant Biodegradable Membranes
발표자
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초록
내용
Membrane technology has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. The rapid growth of membrane technology has been breeding an unavoidable yet critical challenge — the unsustainable disposal of used membranes. Commercial polymer membranes are fabricated from fossil-based monomers and polymers that are not biodegradable. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop membranes that are sustainable from cradle to grave, i.e. both bio-derived and biodegradable. Cellulose is one of the most abundant biopolymers that are biodegradable upon disposal. However, it is only soluble in a handful of solvents, limiting its fabrication into membranes at an industrial scale. To circumvent this bottleneck, in this work, we propose a sustainable and scalable method to fabricate cellulose membranes from cellulose acetate with sacrificial acetate group.