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2021, Volume 15, Issue 4

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Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering >> 2021, Volume 15, Issue 4 doi: 10.1007/s11705-020-2001-2

Recovery of free volume in PIM-1 membranes through alcohol vapor treatment

. Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, School of Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.. Department of Chemistry, School of Natural Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Received: 2020-12-09 Accepted: 2021-02-11 Available online: 2021-02-11
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Abstract

Physical aging is currently a major obstacle for the commercialization of PIM-1 membranes for gas separation applications. A well-known approach to reversing physical aging effects of PIM-1 membranes at laboratory scale is soaking them in lower alcohols, such as methanol and ethanol. However, this procedure does not seem applicable at industrial level, and other strategies must be investigated. In this work, a regeneration method with alcohol vapors (ethanol or methanol) was developed to recover permeability of aged PIM-1 membranes, in comparison with the conventional soaking-in-liquid approach. The gas permeability and separation performance, before and post the regeneration methods, were assessed using a binary mixture of CO and CH (1:1, v:v). Our results show that an 8-hour methanol vapor treatment was sufficient to recover the original gas permeability, reaching a CO permeability>7000 barrer.

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