Liquid-liquid phase separation in polysulfone/polyethersulfone/N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone/water quaternary system

Abstract

To construct a phase diagram of the polysulfone (PSF)/polyethersulfone (PES)/N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)/water quaternary system, cloud point measurements were carried out by a titration method. The miscible region in the PSF/PES/ NMP/water quaternary system was narrow compared to the PSF/NMP/water and PES/NMP/water ternary systems. The binary interaction parameters between PSF and PES were estimated by water sorption experiments. The calculated phase diagram based on the Flory-Huggins theory fit the experimental cloud points well. In addition to the usual polymer-liquid phase separation, polymer-polymer phase separation, which resulted in a PSF-rich phase and a PES-rich phase, was observed with the addition of a small amount of nonsolvent. The boundary separating these two modes of phase separation could be well described and predicted from the calculated phase diagrams with the estimated binary interaction parameters of the components. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.