Polyvinyl alcohol-based separation membranes: a comprehensive review on fabrication techniques, applications and future prospective

Membrane-based systems clearly give a proper solution to the ever-increasing demand for clean water and energy. Polymeric membranes are still employed in energy, filtration, and a variety of other industries. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) has a wide range of uses due to its suitable hydrophilicity, barrier property, film-forming ability, low cost, crosslinking ability, and biodegradability. PVA is crucial to the processing of polarized sheets, packaging, paper, fibers, and adhesives in the industrial environment. PVA may also be utilized in the fabrication of the separation membranes. The solvent of PVA is the water, the greenest solvent, which reduce the environmental problem of membrane fabrication. With the use of PVA, significant progress has been made in both preparation procedures and possible unique uses. In applications of aqueous media, the addition of PVA to the membrane matrix is able to improve permeability and antifouling properties. This comprehensive review will help in the fabrication and design of the PVA-based membranes in various applications of pervaporation, gas separation, dialysis, nanofiber, ion exchange, filtration and adsorbent membranes for future researches.