Objectives

Acid gases like CO2 are major impurities in gas streams containing hydrogen, and membrane-based separation may be utilized to remove these acid gases. One strategy for acid gas removal from mixtures with light gases takes advantage of the affinity of acid gases for polar groups, such as ether oxygens incorporated within polymeric membranes. Our research on cross linked poly(ethylene oxide) revealed good separation performance in removing CO2 from CO2/H2 mixtures and indicated possible further performance improvement by engineering the molecular structure of such materials. To achieve this goal, we are pursuing a fundamental study of the effect of various structure modification strategies on the transport properties of cross-linked poly(ethylene oxide). In addition, we are explorin