Molecular dynamics simulation of separation of methane/carbon dioxide gas mixture by zeolite membrane

Natural gas is considered as the main raw material in the chemical industry and gas refining processes are of great importance. Although methane is a major component of natural gas, there are significant amounts of other nuisance gases in addition to methane. Therefore, one of the most important stages of natural gas purification is the removal of these gases. One of these gases is carbon dioxide, which is found in gas deposits along with methane. The purpose of this project is to investigate the performance of zeolite membrane to remove this type of nuisance gases. In this regard, methane/carbon dioxide gas mixture was investigated and the process of separation of carbon dioxide from methane by MFI zeolite membrane was investigated by molecular dynamics simulation method. In order to separate this gas mixture, external hydrostatic pressure was applied to the system and the effect of temperature rise on the separation performance was examined. Also, the effect of feed composition in the separation process was investigated. The results showed that carbon dioxide molecules were able to pass through the membrane but methane gas molecules were not able to pass. Therefore, it can be said that MFI zeolite membrane can be a suitable membrane for separation of methane/carbon dioxide mixture in industry.