CO2/CH4 Separation via Polymeric Blend Membrane

CO2/CH4 gas separation is a very important applicatable process in upgrading the natural gas and landfil gas recovery. In this work, to investigate the membrane separation process performance, the gas permeation results and CO2/CH4 separation characteristics of different prepared membranes (via blending different molecular weights of polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a modifier with acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) as a backbone structure) have been studied. Furthermore, SEM analysis was carried out for morphological investigations. The effect of PEG content on gas transport properties on the selected sample was also studied. The effect of pressure on CO2 permeation was examined and showed that at the pressure beyond 4 bar, permeability is not affected by pressure. The results showed that more or less in all cases, incorporation of PEG molecules without any significant increase in CH4 permeability increases the CO2/CH4 selectivity. From the view point of gas separation applications the resultant data are within commercial attractive range.