Characterization of the pore area distribution in porous membranes using transport measurements

An approach originally proposed by Mason and coworkers has been applied to model porous membranes to show that transport measurements with small and large solutes can be used to distinguish between porous membranes with the same average pore size but different pore size distributions. In addition, it is shown that such measurements can be used to account for membrane heteroporosity when predicting the sieving characteristics of a membrane. This is done by applying moment theory to results from flux measurements for a small solute at Pe approximate to 1 or to results from measurements of the reflection coefficient for a large solute at infinite Pe. No a priori assumptions about the nature of the distribution of pore areas are necessary. In this paper, the results from calculations performed with three different model membranes with log-normal pore size distributions are reported. These results show that one can begin to distinguish between membranes by measuring the hydraulic and diffusive permeability and performing at least one additional flux measurement - with either a small, non-hindered solute at Pe approximate to 1 or a large solute at infinite Pe. Results also show that a fairly narrow window can be placed on the sieving curve for a heteroporous membrane without performing any sieving measurements. This is an interesting and encouraging result because it means that many of the problems that arise from measuring and interpreting pore size distributions using more traditional techniques can be avoided by using small solute flux measurements to predict the separation characteristics of many porous membranes.