Ion specific effects on aqueous phase separation of responsive copolymers for sustainable membranes.

Hypothesis: Salt identity and concentration affects the preparation of membranes via the aqueous phase separation approach. The phase inversion process and morphology of the resultant membranes is expected to vary as function of these two parameters.

Experiments: Polymeric membranes based on the responsive copolymer polystyrene-alt-maleic acid (PSaMA) are prepared using the aqueous phase separation approach and the influence of salt identity (NaSO, LiCl, NaCl, NaNO, NHCl, MgCl, CaCl) and concentration on resultant membrane morphology and separation performance is investigated.