Authors:

Lily Avery Waterman

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A large percentage of energy use of traditional air conditioning systems is from dehumidification, necessitating the development of more energy-efficient dehumidification systems to combat climate change. Passive membrane-based dehumidification (PMD) is a promising solution as it does not require the condensation of water and can operate above the dew point, unlike conventional dehumidification. However, PMD requires membranes with high thermal insulation to avoid heat loss, which don't currently exist. In this work, thermally insulative support layers of polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) with varying concentrations of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) were fabricated through casting and phase inversion. Pebax with graphene oxide (GO) solution was cast on one side of the membrane to create an active layer to allow water vapor to pass through the membrane while rejecting the air molecules. The thermal conductivity of the support layer was 0.04 W/m-K for 0.5% of RGO in PVDF compared to 0.11 W/m-K for PVDF without RGO. The water vapor permeance was measured using the ASTM E96 wet cup method and permeance range was 3000-3500 GPU, varying with concentration of RGO. The nitrogen permeance varied from 2-5 GPU with RGO concentration using ISO 15101-1 and thus the selectivity (water vapor/nitrogen permeance) range was 550 - 1330. The membranes were characterized by capillary flow porometry (CFP) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). These tests gave a further understanding of how the RGO fillers impact performance in dehumidification applications. Further research will test the membranes in a PMD setup and investigate other thermally insulative materials for the support layer. Keywords: Membrane; Dehumidification; Thermal Conductivity

Source:

Purdue University / 2024

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Co-authors:

Lily Avery Waterman