Manufacture of hydrophobic membranes using recycled polymers for the brackish water distillation

Polymeric materials have a significant impact on the environment due to their non-biodegradability Hence the need to find recycling techniques for these polymer materials leading to products of economic interest and to maintain the quality of the environment in order to achieve sustainable development. In this context a variety of hydrophobic membranes named for water desalination has been produced in our laboratory. These membranes are composed of a polymer blending (PE,PP) dissociated in a mixture of solvents such as butyl acetate (AB), xylene (XL) and liquid paraffin (LP) with the addition of alumina with different concentrations in order to increase the porosity. These hydrophobic membranes will be used in the vacuum membrane distillation process which operates at low pressures and which will be coupled with reverse osmosis to distill these discharges which is at high salinity and obtaining pure water. This coupling makes it possible to minimize the osmosis rejection and therefore to minimize the overflow problem of tank of these discharges as in the case of the desalination station of Matmata, Gabes, therefore gain economically and environmentally. This experimental study was followed by an analytical study by FTIR. A theoretical study on the compatibility of mixing has been conducted. The thermodynamics of mixtures of polymers constitutes an exploratory path for the study of these properties and could in certain cases constitute a decision-aid tool for the design of new compatible mixtures according to the solubility parameter which characterizes the interaction between components.