Gas separation properties of the dense polymer-zeolite powder composite membranes

Abstract

The natural balance in the Earth's atmosphere is significantly influenced by the human emission of the combustion products, mainly carbon dioxide. Therefore, strong efforts are directed in the direction of the reduction of that emission. The solution might be searched in the direction of the construction of the membrane that would be highly transparent to the carbon dioxide, but not transparent to the other gases commonly present in the waste gases (oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, methane). One of the feasible designs for this purpose is dense, non-porous membranes, with zeolite particles dispersed in the polymer matrix. Zeolite particles should increase the solubility of the carbon dioxide, and thus enhance its permeability. In this paper, the possibility of application of polyether-b-amide (with 60% of PEG) as a polymer matrix was tested. For the inorganic component, four different zeolite types with three different pore geometries were tested. The influence of the additive which was added in order to provide good contact between the highly polar and charged zeolite inorganic particle, and hydrophobic polymer chains was also tested.