چكيده به لاتين
Nowadays, since membrane separation processes offer many advantages, including low handling and operating costs, great operational flexibility, light weight and low space, they can be suitable methods for removing acid gases (CO2 and H2S) from natural gases. One of the most important parameters in selecting a good membrane is the type of the polymer. The polymer should have good affinity to H2S and CO2 compared to CH4 and consequently, acid gases permeability values can increase more due to their higher solubilities in the polymeric membrane. The previous researches showed that poly (ether-block-amide) (PEBAX-1074) is suitable for this purpose. Recently, successful attempts have been made to add nanoparticles to polymers in membrane preparation. If the size of the particles are incorporated into the polymer matrix is less than 100 nm, the prepared membranes will be known as nanocomposite membranes. High affinity to the molecule which is the purpose of the gas separation should be one of the significant characteristics of the selected nanoparticles. Most of the metal oxide nanoparticles such as SiO2, TiO2, Al2O3, ZnO, etc. are of positive interactions with acid gases and accordingly, can be used as fillers in polymer matrices. In other words, such prepared membranes will have suitable selectivities due to their high affinity to the acid gases resulting from the incorporated fillers.
In this study, four types of nano inorganic fillers SiO2, TiO2, Al2O3, and ZnO are embodied into the PEBAX-1074 matrix to prepare nanocomposite membranes. All the membranes are prepared via solution casting-solvent evaporation method. The fabricated membranes are characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). CO2 and CH4 permeation properties of the neat PEBAX and the PEBAX based nanocomposite membranes are investigated and the obtained results show that performance of the nanocomposite membranes is better than that of the neat membrane.
