To reduce the environmental impact of acids present in various industrial wastes, improved and robust anion exchange membranes (AEMs) are highly desired. Moreover, they should exhibit high retention of salts, fast acid permeation and they should be able to operate with low energy input. In this work, AEMs are prepared using a facile solution-casting from brominated poly-(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide) (BPPO) and increasing amounts of 2-phenylimidazole (PI). Neither quaternary ammonium salts, nor ionic liquids and silica-containing compounds are involved in the synthesis. The prepared membranes showed an ion exchange capacity of 1.1-1.8 mmol/g, a water uptake of 22%-47%, a linear expansion ratio of 1%-6% and a tensile strength of 0.83-10.20 MPa. These membranes have potential for recovering waste acid via diffusion dialysis, as the acid dialysis coefficient (UH) at room temperature for HCl is in the range of 0.006-0.018 m/h while the separation factor (S) is in the range of 16-28, which are higher than commercial DF-120B membranes (UH = 0.004 m/h, S = 24).
Keywords: 2-phenylimidazole; BPPO; acid recovery; anion exchange membrane; diffusion dialysis.