ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Novel Polydimethylsiloxane membranes impregnated with SAPO-34 zeolite particles for gas separation

Bilal Haider, Muhammad Rizwan Dilshad, Muhammad Sarfraz Akram, Atif Islam, and Malte Kaspereit

Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Institute of Separation Science and Technology, Friedrich Alexander University (FAU), Erlangen Nürnberg, Germany

E-mail: bilal.icet@pu.edu.pk

Received: 17 November 2020  Accepted: 12 July 2021

Abstract:

Novel polydimethylsiloxane membranes impregnated with SAPO-34 zeolite particles were synthesized using solution casting method and then analyzed by FTIR, TGA, SEM, tensile testing and permeation performances with CO₂, N₂, CH₄, O₂ and H₂. SAPO-34 impregnation resulted in enhancement of both permeability and selectivity of all the gases up to 30 wt.% loading,; and beyond this threshold, further addition resulted in decline in gas permeation performances. On the basis of permeation performances, 30 wt.% filler impregnated membrane was designated as the best performance membrane, which was further chosen to analyze the effect of feed gas pressure. It has been found that gas permeation properties keep on increasing with the increase in feed gas pressure up to 20 bar. The gas permeability results of CO₂ were then compared with conventional gas permeability models, and it was found that the gas permeability followed Maxwell Model. The best performance membrane was then tested for equimolar mixture of CO₂/CH₄ at high pressure and found that mixed gas selectivity was considerably lesser than ideal gas selectivity owing to competitive sorption phenomenon between the gases. Finally, the gas permeation properties of the best performance membrane were compared with 2008 Robeson upper bound limits and found that at 20 bar and 25 °C, the gas permeation properties surpassed the upper bound limits for CO₂/N₂ and O₂/N₂ separation and approached near to these limits for H₂/N₂ and CO₂/CH₄ separation.

Keywords: PDMS; Gas separation membranes; SAPO-34

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-021-01790-w

Chemical Papers 75 (12) 6417–6431 (2021)