Yin Fong Yeong

Empirical Model of Operating Temperature and Pressure Effect towards Pure and Binary O2/ N2 Gas Permeability in Polysulfone Membrane

Oxygen (O2) enriched air combustion via adaption of polymeric membranes has been proposed to be a feasible alternative to increase combustion proficiency while minimizing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Nonetheless, majority of techno-economic assessment on the O2 enriched combustion evolving membrane separation process are confined to assumption of constant membrane permeance. In reality, it is well known that membrane permeance is highly dependent upon the temperature and pressure to which it is operated. Therefore, in this work, an empirical model, which includes the effect of temperature and pressure to permeance, has been evaluated based on own experimental work using polysulfone membrane. The empirical model has been further validated with published experimental results. It is found that the model is able to provide an excellent characterization of the membrane permeance across a wide range of operating conditions for both pure and binary gas with determination coefficient of minimally 0.99.

Fabrication of 6FDA-durene membrane incorporated with zeolite T and aminosilane grafted zeolite T for CO2/CH4 separation

In the present work, zeolite T and aminosilane grafted zeolite T are embedded into 6FDA-durene polyimide phase for the fabrication of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs). FESEM images demonstrated that the improvement of interfacial adhesion between zeolite and polymer phases in MMM loaded with aminosilane grafted zeolite T was not significant as compared to zeolite T/6FDA-durene MMM. From the gas permeation test, CO2/CH4 selectivity up to 26.4 was achieved using MMM containing aminosilane grafted zeolite T, while MMM loaded with ungrafted zeolite T showed CO2/CH4 selectivity of 19.1. In addition, MMM incorporated with aminosilane grafted zeolite T particles successfully lies on Robeson upper bound 2008, which makes it an attractive candidate for CO2/CH4 separation.