Modelling across Multiple Scales to Design Biopolymer Membranes for Sustainable Gas Separations: 2-Multiscale Approach

Abstract

The majority of materials used for membrane-based separation of gas mixtures are non-renewable and non-biodegradable, and the assessment of alternative bio-based polymers requires expensive and time-consuming experimental campaigns. This effort can be reduced by adopting suitable modelling approaches. In this series of works, we propose various modelling approaches to assess the CO2/CH4 separation performance of eight different copolymers of 3-hydroxybutyrate and 3-hydroxyvalerate (PHBV) using a limited amount of experimental data for model calibration. In part 1, we adopted a fully atomistic approach based on Molecular Dynamics (MD), while, in this work, we propose a multiscale methodology where a molecular description of the polymers is bridged to a macroscopic prediction of its gas sorption behaviour. PHBV structures were simulated using MD to obtain pressure–volume–temperature data, which were used to parametrise the Sanchez–Lacombe Equation of State. This, in turn, allows for the evaluation of the CO2 and CH4 solubility in the copolymers at various pressures and compositions with little computational effort, enabling the estimate of the sorption-based selectivity. The gas separation performance obtained with this multiscale technique was compared to results obtained with a fully atomistic model and experimental data. The solubility–selectivity for the CO2/CH4 mixture is in reasonable agreement between the two models and the experimental data. The multiscale method presented is a time-efficient alternative to fully atomistic methods and detailed experimental campaigns and can accelerate the introduction of renewable materials in different applications.