Improved CO2 separation performance of poly etherblock amide (PEBA)/MOF thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes

Resumen del póster presentado a la Conferencia EuroMembrane, celebrada en Copenhague (Dinamarca) del 28 de noviembre al 2 de diciembre de 2021. Main topic: Gas separation.To achieve the Paris Agreement target of below 1.5 ºC in the global average temperature rising, harmful greenhouse gases emissions must be reduced considerably in the coming decades. To accomplish this target, energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies, and CO2 capture and storage approaches must be developed. Recently, membrane-based processes have emerged as attractive candidates for energy-efficient gas separations. The performance of a membrane can be expressed in terms of (i) permeance, the normalized flux for the pressure gradient (ii) permeability, the permeance multiplied by the membrane thickness, and (iii) selectivity, the ratio of permeances. To achieve an efficient separation, which exceeds the Robeson trade-off relationship between permeability and selectivity, an ideal membrane for gas separation should be as thin as possible, to maximize the flux through it (high CO2 permeance), highly selective and mechanically robust. To accomplish this target, composite membranes must be prepared with a very thin selective layer. Furthermore, the incorporation of porous nanofillers in ultra-thin dense layers has demonstrated superior gas separation performances compared to that of the bare polymer. In this work, thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes, comprising different porous zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) embedded in a dense polyether-block-amide (PEBA) thin layer have been fabricated. Moreover, the influence of particle loading and functionalization have also been studied.Financial support from the Research Project PID2019-104009RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033 is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewe