An experimental investigation into the permeability and selectivity of PTFE membrane: a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide

Abstract

Research and technology innovations in the 1970s led to the significant commercial practice of gas separation by membranes that exists today. These advances involved developing membrane structures that could produce high fluxes and modules for packing a large amount of membrane area per unit volume (Murphy et al., 2009). At present, the share of using a polymeric membrane in the capture of CO2 is increasing and gradually the membrane technology is considered as the promising method in separation units, although the number of commercial membranes is not high. CO2 capture from natural gas is one of the controversial topics that many researchers and engineers try to find the best method satisfying both high efficiency and low capital cost. In common, chemical physical absorption towers are applied to remove CO2 from natural gas in order to prevent pipeline corrosion, even though the other component such as H2S gives rise to operating problems. The obscure angle of a conventional unit is related to the high energy consumption while the absorbent needs to be purified by the regeneration units which implement the temperature as a unique manipulating parameter for separating amine groups. The great advantages of using the membrane in gas industry are the low capital cost, easy installation and maintenance so that for this simple reason, new membranes come to the market for different types of processes. Capture of CO2 from natural gas accounts for one of the major difficulties so that the engineers try to employ membrane modules as to alter the process efficiency. However, there are only a limited number of membranes that can be used in real industry and the research still continues over this interesting topic (Burggraaf and Cot, 1996).