Fabrication and investigation of performance of poly amide- poly ether copolymer hybrid membranes based on the nanostructure ceramic supports in CO2 & N2 separation

In this work, polyamid-polyether block copolymer (PEBA) was synthesized as a selective top layer of nanostructure ceramic supports and their performance on separation of polar (CO2) and non-polar (N2) gases were evaluated. The effects of several parameters such as polymer solution concentration and number of coated layers on the performance of prepared compositemembranes were investigated. PEBA/ceramic nanocomposite membranes were fabricated by dip-coating of ceramic nanocomposite porous support in 3, 10 and 30 wt. % of copolymer solutions with different dip-coating steps. Chemical and morphological studies on the synthesized copolymer and hybrid membranes were carried out by FT-IR spectroscopy, Atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical microscopy (OM). The results showed that hybrid membranes with 30 wt. % of copolymer solution with 4 dip-coating steps had better performance in the separation of CO2 and N2 processes.