Date of Award

5-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Eric M. Davis

Committee Member

Mark C. Theis

Committee Member

Mark E. Roberts

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate the influence of solvent choice to the Nafion-lignin proton exchange membranes that used in the vanadium redox flow batteries. The influence of two different solvents: DMF and DMSO were investigated in this paper. Results show that when using DMSO as solvent, Nafion-lignin membranes' vanadium ion cross over can be greatly reduced in comparing with membranes prepared from DMF. Also, membranes prepared from DMSO also show higher water uptake ability and lower ion exchange capacity than the membranes prepared from DMF. This paper has also investigated the influence of lignin type to the membranes. Results show that, when using DMSO as solvent, high molecular weight lignin has somewhat better performance than the low molecular weight lignin. TEM image results show that such difference could be resulted from difference in the patterns of lignin dispersion.

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