An Insight into Hollow Fiber Membrane Contactor Technology and its Position in Separation of Carbon Dioxide Gas

The increasing trend of pollutant gases emission into the atmosphere, particularly greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and their role in global warming, has led to numerous investigations to separate these gases. For this purpose, the hollow fiber membrane contactor (HFMC) technology, possessing advantages over traditional separation processes, has drawn a great deal of attention. Some of these advantages include consumption of less energy, low footprint, providing high contact area for mass transfer, and easier scale up. Therefore, compared to traditional separation methods, such as chemical absorption in packed columns, adsorption, and cryogenic distillation, HFMC might be considered as a proper alternative for separation of pollutant gases, more specifically CO2, which is the most important greenhouse gas. In this paper, technical characteristics and effective parameters on separation performance of HFMC along with a number of studies conducted by foreign and internal researchers have been investigated and some active companies involving in this field have been also introduced.