Organic solvent resistance of glutaraldehyde crosslinked chitosan film

Abstract

The crosslinked chitosan films have been formulated with glutaraldehyde with a range of concentration and crosslinking time by using solvent-evaporation casting technique to use as the selective layer of the composite membranes in the solvent recovery. The primary objective of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of strength and solvent resistance of chitosan films. The tensile strength and degree of crosslinking were determined by tensile measurement and FT-IR spectroscopy analysis sequentially. It was established that the tensile strength of the crosslinked chitosan films decreased with increasing glutaraldehyde concentration and crosslinking time. The crosslinked chitosan films with 0.02%w/w glutaraldehyde concentration and 20 minutes of crosslinking time showed the highest tensile strength and had good solvent resistance to non polar solvents including hexane, methyl isobutyl ketone and ethylacetate. The degree of crosslinking of the chitosan films increased with increasing glutaraldehyde concentration and crosslinking time.