Fabrication of PEBA Polymeric Membrane Layers on Nanostructure PSF Supports to Separation of CO2 from N2 and CH4

One of the common methods for the removal of acidic gases in the natural gas is the membrane technology. Poly ether block amide (PEBA) copolymer is one of the most important and talented membrane materials in this field which is applied in multilayer composite structures. In this study, PEBA polymeric layers have been fabricated on nanostructure polysulfone (PSF) supports using dip coating method without gutter layer in order to separation of CO2 from N2 and CH4. The AFM analyses have shown that pore size and mean roughness of PSF support are 10.12 and 6.87 nm, respectively. The morphology of fabricated membranes with solution concentration of 2 and 3wt% has been characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and their performance has been investigated with pure gas permeations. The obtained results have shown that the composite membrane with selective layer of 3wt% PEBA had a suitable performance with permeance of 27 GPU for CO2 and ideal selectivity of 46 and 23 for CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 separation, respectively. Moreover, the effect of pressure difference on membrane performance has been studied. The results have shown that the permeance and ideal selectivity of membrane increases with increasing of pressure difference.