Silica-based membranes exhibit significant promise for the separation of hydrogen from other larger gas molecules based on size sieving mechanism, particularly when employed in membrane reactors. Nevertheless, the migration of silanol bonds (Si–OH) formed under hydrothermal conditions leads to alterations in pore size, ultimately compromising the performance of the membrane. Therefore, this study focuses on determining the pore size of cobalt-doped silica membranes before and after hydrothermal treatment by the apparent activation energy of gas permeation. The Oscillator model and the effective medium theory are employed to estimate the potential pore size distribution, as well as to calculate the apparent activation energy and permeability. The calculated apparent activation energy is compared with experimental data to identify the most probable pore size distribution, which showed the minimum activation energy error to the experimental value. The calculated permeability based on the identified pore size distribution is in line with experimental permeability, which validated the identified pore size distribution. Since silica-based membrane is generally applied in hydrothermal conditions, our model successfully identifies the changes in pore size of silica-based membranes after hydrothermal treatment. The results demonstrated that hydrothermal treatment significantly impacts the pore size of silica-based membranes. Specifically, 5-membered rings are prevalent in the intact membrane, but after hydrothermal treatment, there is a gradual shift of the pore size distribution towards larger pores, potentially leading to a decrease in sieving performance. This methodology presents a promising approach for determining intriguing pore size information of porous materials.
Read full abstract