Potential effect of potting resin on the performance of hollow fibre membrane modules in a CO 2/CH 4 gas separation system

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of epoxy and polyurethane resins when utilised as a potting resin in a hollow fibre membrane module used for CO 2/CH 4 separation. Due to swelling and shrinkage of the tubesheet, the permeation flowrates observed have shown significant fluctuations, thus, affecting the overall purity obtained by a membrane module. This clearly shows that not only the quality and variation of the hollow fibre membranes affect the results obtained by a hollow fibre membrane module, but also the selection of potting resins. Four samples comprising of 2 epoxy samples and 2 polyurethane samples were used to pot 50 strands of polysulphone hollow fibre membranes from the same batch of spinning. Utilising different feed concentrations of CO 2/CH 4 gases and operating pressures, permeation flowrates for the modules potted with the four samples were observed using a hollow fibre membrane gas separation testing apparatus. This study found that as T g of the samples increased, plasticisation levels of samples lowered. In addition, this study also found that an increase in CO 2 concentration corresponds with the increase in the degree of plasticisation for all samples, which causes a decrease in T g, which directly causes a drop in its modulus of elasticity. Therefore, suggesting that potting resins with higher T g are more compatible for CO 2/CH 4 gas separation systems.