The Uptake of Solvent in Polymeric Thin Membranes By a Relaxation-Sorption Coupled Mechanism

The diffusion behavior of liquid into polymer has been described by Fick's law, but the departure from Fickian diffusion is frequently found. In this study, 'noble' expressions for the rates of relaxation and sorption are introduced to eliminate these limitations. The ralaxation-sorption coupled mechanism model are based on the possibility of contacting liquid molecule and the active site which has the numerical concept of free volume. The concept has an analogy of reaction rate expressed by the possibility of collision with molecules and used in adsorption and reactive extraction etc. The new model simulated by Rungc-Kutta method for initial-value problem and Fickian diffusion is caompared with experimental data. The results show that the ralaxation-sorption coupled mechanism is able to account well for Fickian and non-Fickian sorption behavior including sigmoid and two-stage. In addition, this model has a chance of expansion to multi-component sorption with ease.