Diclofenac Permeation Through Chitosan Membrane

We have carried out the formation of chitosan membranes as flat films by solvent evaporation method to determine the aqueous diclofenac permeation. Membranes were crosslinked with citric acid at different weight fractions and characterized using techniques such as FTIR, SEM, TGA and DSC. The FTIR and the thermal techniques showed that samples with citric acid were modified by the crosslink reaction. In this context, the swelling factor \(\:\left({S}_{f}\right)\) in water varies inversely to citric acid weight fraction, \(\:{S}_{f}\) is between 1.41 and 1.17, which can be considered as a low ratio. Membranes were used in the liquid phase permeation of NaCl, used as a probe molecule where permeability decreases as the inlet pressure increases. Finally, the membranes were used in the diclofenac permeation, where increasing the crosslinking degree the permeability decreases, demonstrating that membranes can separate diclofenac from water. SEM images demonstrate that diclofenac was retained in the upper side of the membrane and thermogravimetric analysis shows that diclofenac interacts with the membrane by slightly shifting the degradation temperature of the sample. Permeability is an inverse function of the crosslinking degree of the membrane.