Abstract
CO2 in natural gas must be removed (natural gas sweetening) to meet specifications in order to increase heating value (Wobbe index) and reduce corrosion of pipelines. The most widely used technology for natural gas sweetening is amine absorption; a technology with high capital cost, high energy consumption for absorbent regeneration and potentially environmental pollution. Being low-cost, energy-saving and environment-friendly, optimized membrane technology has the potential of becoming a very good alternative for natural gas sweetening. Commercial membranes for this separation are in general conventional polymeric membranes based on solution diffusion mechanism, which exhibit relatively low selectivity and flux compared with the facilitated transport membranes. Polyvinylamine/polyvinylalcohol (PVAm/PVA) blend membranes with fixed amino groups as CO2 transport carriers were developed. PVAm offers a high amount of primary amino groups while the entanglement of PVAm with a mechanically robust polymer, PVA, enhances polymeric network with good membrane forming properties. The reversible reactions of CO2 with amino carriers in PVAm facilitate the CO2 transport, resulting in both high CO2 permeability and CO2/CH4 selectivity. The defect-free ultra thin PVAm/PVA blend membranes cast on porous polysulfone (PSf) supports were prepared and evaluated. The selectivity of CO2/CH4 up to 45 and CO2 permeance up to 0.3m3(STP)/m2.h.bar were documented at 2bar. Selectivity up to 40 for CO2/CH4 was also recorded at 15bar. The blend membrane showed good reproducibility and stable performance.
Published Version
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