Ultrathin Reduced Graphene Oxide/Organosilica Hybrid Membrane for Gas Separation

Abstract

Here, reduced graphene oxide (r-GO) nanosheets were embedded in an organosilica network to assemble an ultrathin hybrid membrane on the tubular ceramic substrate. With the organosilica nanocompartments inside the r-GO stacks and the intensified polymerization, r-GO sheets endow the as-prepared hybrid membranes with high H2and CO2separation performance. The resulting selectivities of H2/CH4and CO2/CH4are found to be 223 and 55, respectively, together with gas permeance of approximately 2.5 × 10-7mol·m-2·s-1·Pa-1for H2and 6.1 × 10-8mol·m-2·s-1·Pa-1for CO2at room temperature and 0.2 MPa. To separate larger molecules from H2, the H2/C3H8and H2/i-C4H10selectivities are as high as 1775 and 2548, respectively. Moreover, at 150 °C and 0.2 MPa, the hybrid membrane retains high separation performances with ideal selectivities higher than 200 and 30 for H2/CH4and CO2/CH4, respectively, which are attractive for gas separation and purification of practical applications.