Mutual influence in permeation of CO2-containing mixtures through a SAPO-34 membrane

Publication date: Available online 7 October 2019Source: Journal of Membrane ScienceAuthor(s): Pasquale Francesco Zito, Adele Brunetti, Alessio Caravella, Enrico Drioli, Giuseppe BarbieriAbstractThe presence of adsorbed CO2 significantly affects the permeation of weakly adsorbed species in zeolite membranes. At the same time, CO2 is itself influenced by the presence of another component, deviating its permeation with respect to the single-gas condition. In this work, we investigated the mutual interaction between CO2 and the other permeating gases through SAPO-34 zeolite membranes for several binary mixtures with H2, N2 or CH4, varying temperature (25–100 °C), feed pressure (200–1000 kPa) and CO2 composition (0.05–0.95). We used a validated model (Zito et al., J. Membr. Sci. 564, 2018, 166–173) considering the competition between surface and gas translation diffusion. CO2 permeance is found higher in mixture with H2 in the whole range of operating conditions investigated, whereas CH4 slows down CO2 permeation. SAPO-34 shows a selectivity in mixture quite higher from the one evaluated from the permeance of single gas. The choice of appropriate operating conditions allows high permeance and selectivity, making SAPO-34 particularly suitable for CO2 separation.
Source: Journal of Membrane Science - Category: Materials Science Source Type: research