Preparation of a Facilitated Transport Membrane Composed of Carboxymethyl Chitosan and Polyethylenimine for CO2/N2 Separation

Jiang-Nan Shen; Chang-Chao Yu; Gan-Ning Zeng; Bart van der Bruggen

doi:10.3390/ijms14023621

Preparation of a Facilitated Transport Membrane Composed of Carboxymethyl Chitosan and Polyethylenimine for CO2/N2 Separation

Int J Mol Sci. 2013 Feb 7;14(2):3621-38. doi: 10.3390/ijms14023621.

Authors

Jiang-Nan Shen¹, Chang-Chao Yu, Gan-Ning Zeng, Bart van der Bruggen

Affiliation

¹ College of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China. shenjn@zjut.edu.cn.

Abstract

The miscibility of carboxymethyl chitosan/polyethylenimine (CMCS/PEI) blends was analyzed by FT-IR, TGA and SEM. Defect-free CMCS/PEI blend membranes were prepared with polysulfone (PSf) ultrafiltration membranes as support layer for the separation of CO(2)/N(2) mixtures. The results demonstrate that the CMCS/PEI blend is miscible, due to the hydrogen bonding interaction between the two targeted polymers. For the blended membrane without water, the permeability of CO(2) gas is 3.6 × 10-7 cm3 cm-2 s-1 cmHg-1 and the corresponding separation factor for CO(2) and N(2) gas is about 33 at the pressure of 15.2 cmHg. Meanwhile, the blended membrane with water has the better permselectivity. The blended membrane containing water with PEI content of 30 wt% has the permeance of 6.3 × 10-4 cm3 cm-2 s-1 cmHg-1 for CO(2) gas and a separation factor of 325 for CO(2)/N(2) mixtures at the same feed pressure. This indicates that the CO(2) separation performance of the CMCS/PEI blend membrane is higher than that of other facilitated transport membranes reported for CO(2)/N(2) mixture separation.