Towards the Development of CO<sub>2</sub> Separation Membranes
- 1 Department of Chemical Engineering and Center for Environmentally Benign Functional Materials (CEBFM) Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931
- 2 Department of Chemical Engineering and Center for Environmentally Benign Functional Materials (CEBFM) Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931
- 3 Department of Chemical Engineering and Center for Environmentally Benign Functional Materials (CEBFM) Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931
Abstract
This work pertains to current results in the development of CO 2 separation membranes from flue gas streams typically found in coal-fired power plants. A versatile free-radicalbased polymerization method is employed for the development of a multifunctional block copolymer that has good affinity to CO 2 , is processable into and applicable as gas separation polymer membranes. In order to validate the resulting materials, thin slabs of the polymer were melt-processed, and then sorbed with CO 2 and N2 in a pressure cell. When the pressure is released, foaming tendencies at the outer regions of the samples were observed. A quantitative model involving measurements of unfoamed regions is used to correlate with permeability ratios as well as CO 2 -polymer mutual diffusivities. One particular optimized material, called RB1-215, is shown to possess a good CO 2 relative permeability to N2. Thus, the experimental methodology has been shown to possibly be able to develop the next generation of CO 2 separation polymer membranes for carbon sequestration applications.
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