Paolo Toniolo

1.08 – Amorphous Perfluoropolymer Membranes

The low energy consumption and the technological simplicity of the membrane-separation processes has led, in the last two decades, to a significant development of these technologies for industrial separations of mixtures of gases and liquids. Among the different types of membranes available in the market, those based on fluoropolymeric materials are of increasingly greater interest thanks to some unique properties, such as their excellent stability in harsh conditions, that is, in the presence of strong reactive chemicals and high temperatures. Moreover, amorphous perfluoropolymers, having a high solubility in fluorinated solvents, can be advantageously used for the preparation of membranes both by solution and by melt processing. The simplicity of the membrane-separation process and the possibility of production of membranes with different selectivities make them very promising for a wide range of applications. In this chapter, a review of the developments in the field of amorphous perfluoropolymeric membranes, with both hydrophobic and hydrophilic character, is presented and discussed.