Abstract
The bottleneck of conventional polymeric membranes applied in industry has a tradeoff between permeability and selectivity that deters its widespread expansion. This can be circumvented through a hybrid membrane that utilizes the advantages of inorganic and polymer materials to improve the gas separation performance. The approach can be further enhanced through the incorporation of amine-impregnated fillers that has the potential to minimize defects while simultaneously enhancing gas affinity. An innovative combination between impregnated Linde T with different numbers of amine-functional groups (i.e., monoamine, diamine, and triamine) and 4,4′-(hexafluoroisopropylidene) diphthalic anhydride (6FDA)-derived polyimide has been elucidated to explore its potential in CO2/CH4 separation. Detailed physical properties (i.e., free volume and glass transition temperature) and gas transport behavior (i.e., solubility, permeability, and diffusivity) of the fabricated membranes have been examined to unveil the effect of different numbers of amine-functional groups in Linde T fillers. It was found that a hybrid membrane impregnated with Linde T using a diamine functional group demonstrated the highest improvement compared to a pristine polyimide with 3.75- and 1.75-fold enhancements in CO2/CH4 selectivities and CO2 permeability, respectively, which successfully lies on the 2008 Robeson’s upper bound. The novel coupling of diamine-impregnated Linde T and 6FDA-derived polyimide is a promising candidate for application in large-scale CO2 removal processes.
Highlights
Natural gas has been identified as a primary fuel for the near future due to its low emissions and eco-friendly benefits
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that has reported the effect of amine-functionalized Linde T particles in a polyimide polymer phase, which can be used to synthesize a novel hybrid membrane material for CO2 / CH4 separation
Linde T particles were impregnated with monoamine, diamine, and triamine functional groups
Summary
Natural gas has been identified as a primary fuel for the near future due to its low emissions and eco-friendly benefits. Recent research works devoted to the fabrication of hybrid membranes has emerged to utilize advantages of different materials to improve gas the separation performance as an ultimate outcome [10] In this context, the incorporation of inorganic fillers into the polymer membrane serves to increase the affinity toward certain gases while changing the structure’s free volume through alterations in the polymer chain packing [11]. Most of the studies devoted to the elucidation of zeolites functionalization have merely been confined to inorganic materials, while not being incorporated as fillers in the polymeric membrane matrix to study their gas separation performance Another issue is that the majority of studies have been solely concerned with the improvement of the permeability and selectivity of the membranes [17,18,19,20,21]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that has reported the effect of amine-functionalized Linde T particles in a polyimide polymer phase, which can be used to synthesize a novel hybrid membrane material for CO2 / CH4 separation
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