Membranes for Gas Separation Current Development and Challenges

Abstract

—A new bang of natural gas demand has opened up the opportunities towards the utilization of membrane technology for the purification process.The advantages in terms of smaller footprint, lower weight, minimum utility requirement and low labor intensity make them appropriate for wide scale applications. Polymeric membrane is one of the greatest emerging fields in membrane material development. Nevertheless, the separation performance of the existing polymeric materials were reached a limit in the trade-off between permeability and selectivity. The development of inorganic material gives a significance improvement in membrane performance but it outrageously expensive for many applications and having complicated procedure during fabrication process have limit the application of inorganic membrane in gas separation. Thus, a rapid demand in membrane technology for gas separation and the effort toward seeking the membranes with higher permeability and selectivity has motivated the development of mixed matrix membrane. Mixed matrix membrane (MMM) which incorporating inorganic fillers in a polymer matrix is expected to overcome the limitations of the polymeric and inorganic membranes. Apart from an overview of the different membrane materials for gas separation, this paper also highlights the development of mixed matrix membrane and challenges in fabrication of mixed matrix membranes.