Abstract
ABSTRACTPoly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)‐based membranes have obtained considerable attentions for CO2 separation for their promising CO2 separation performance and excellent thermal/chemical resistance. In this work, a one‐pot thiol–ene/epoxy reaction was used to prepare crosslinked PEG‐based and PEG/ionic liquids (ILs) blend membranes. Four ILs of the same cation [Bmim]+ with different anions ([BF4]−, [PF6]−, [NTf2]−, and [TCM]−) were chosen as the additives. The chemical structure, thermal properties, hydrophilicity, and permeation performance of the resultant membranes were investigated to study the ILs' effects. An increment in CO2 permeability (~34%) was obtained by optimizing monomer ratios and thus crosslinking network structures. Adding ILs into optimized PEG matrix shows distinct influences in CO2 separation performance depending on the anions' types, due to the different CO2 affinities and compatibilities with PEG matrix. Among these ILs, [Bmim][NTf2] was found the most effective in enhancing CO2 transport by simultaneously increasing the solubility and diffusivity of CO2. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Polymer Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. J. Polym. Sci. 2020, 58, 2575‐2585
Highlights
Epoxy resins, or called polyepoxides, are a class of polymers formed by monomers or oligomers containing epoxy groups,[1] usually with the presence of crosslinkers, such as amines
The used epoxy monomers are mainly focused on poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based materials, which have been considered as one of the most promising materials to overcome the trade-off between gas permeability and selectivity of the polymeric membranes,[12] due to the high CO2 solubility and solubility selectivity.[13,14]
Compared with the PEG membranes formed by the classical acrylate homopolymerization, membranes prepared by using the epoxy–amine reaction exhibit around 60% higher CO2 permeability,[13] due probably to the more flexible crosslinking network
Summary
Called polyepoxides, are a class of polymers formed by monomers or oligomers containing epoxy groups,[1] usually with the presence of crosslinkers, such as amines. With the presence of the liquid additives, the concentration of reactive functional groups inside monomer mixture is further diluted, which increases the difficulty to complete the reaction To address this issue, Shao and coworkers employed a two-step method to incorporate free-PEG into the crosslinked PEG membranes, where the PEG membranes were prepared via a thermalinduced epoxy–amine reaction, the membranes were immersed into aqueous PEG solution to obtain the PEGimbedded membranes.[15,25] A CO2 permeability of up to 1301 Barrer has been reported accompanied with a CO2/H2 selectivity of 13 after imbedding free PEG into the crosslinked PEG membranes, which makes it very promising for various CO2 separation applications. The solubility (S) was calculated by the permeability (P) and the diffusivity (D) based on the solution-diffusion mechanism:
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