Abstract
Membranes are a promising technology for bulk CO2 separation from natural gas mixtures due to their numerous advantages. Despite the numerous fundamental studies on creating better quality membrane efficiency, scaling up the research work for field testing requires huge efforts. The challenge is to ensure the stability of the membrane throughout the operation while maintaining its high performance. This review addresses the key challenges in the application of polymeric technology for CO2 separation, focusing on plasticization and aging. A brief introduction to the properties and limitations of the current commercial polymeric membrane is first deliberated. The effect of each plasticizer component in natural gas towards membrane performance and the relationship between operating conditions and the membrane efficiency are discussed in this review. The recent technological advancements and techniques to overcome the plasticization and aging issues covering polymer modification, high free-volume polymers, polymer blending and facilitated transport membranes (FTMs) have been highlighted. We also give our perspectives on a few main features of research related to polymeric membranes and the way forwards. Upcoming research must emphasize mixed gas with CO2 including minor condensable contaminants as per real natural gas, to determine the competitive sorption effect on CO2 permeability and membrane selectivity. The effects of pore blocking, plasticization and aging should be given particular attention to cater for large-scale applications.
Highlights
CO2 has been highly emitted to the environment, with the distribution of 25% being from electricity and heat production, 24% from agriculture, forestry, and other land usages, 21% by industry, 14% from transportation, 10% by other energies, and 6% from building [1]
The results showed that the CO2-induced plasticization does not happen at CO2 pressure up to 30 bar for 6FDA-CADA1-425, which has CO2 permeability of 917.4 Barrer and CO2/CH4 selectivity of 28.11 [3]
This review addresses the key challenges in the application of polymeric technology for CO2 separation, focusing on plasticization and aging
Summary
CO2 has been highly emitted to the environment, with the distribution of 25% being from electricity and heat production, 24% from agriculture, forestry, and other land usages, 21% by industry, 14% from transportation, 10% by other energies, and 6% from building [1]. A certain percentage of the hydrocarbon loss is required from the membrane to meet the flare BTU (British Thermal Unit) number to avoid using sales gas as the flare fuel gas In this case, polymeric membrane possesses high productivity, and lower purity is required for separation, so membrane area and cost could be reduced. Polymer materials are more rigid, more favourable for application in gas separation since they experience less aging This makes them more stable for long-term operation [30]. By emphasising the practical industrial application, the present review provides the state-of-the-art scientific and technological advancement in producing plasticizationand aging-resistant polymeric membranes, covering various existing commercial polymeric membranes, their modification, and new novel polymers. Particular attention is paid to the key challenges in the application of polymeric technology, and the potential techniques that have been explored to overcome the issues are discussed
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