Design of thin and tubular MOFs-polymer mixed matrix membranes for highly selective separation of H2 and CO2

Abstract

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) based mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) have shown a great potential for gas separation applications, but rarely reported the fabrication of the tubular MMMs that are favorable for practical applications. Here, for the first time, we report facile fabrication of thin MOFs (NH2-CAU-1 and NH2-MIL-53) based MMMs on tubular ceramic substrate modified by organosilica as bonding layer. The as-synthesized ultrathin and continuous MMMs are tightly bound with the substrate and MOF nanoparticles are well-dispersed into polymer matrix. The resulting membranes display excellent gas separation performance with both elevated selectivity and enhanced permeation rate, which can be affected by the incorporated MOFs. The corresponding MMM containing 20 wt% NH2-MIL-53 and 80 wt% PMMA has a high H2 permeance of 1.094 × 10−8 mol·s−1·Pa−1·m−2 and high selectivity of up to 53.1 for H2 and CO2.