Development of hollow fiber membranes for carbon dioxide absorption in gas-liquid membrane contactors

Abstract

Porous asymmetric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and polysulfone (PSF) hollow fiber membranes were structurally developed to improve gas permeability, wetting resistance and carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption flux. The membranes were prepared via a wet phase-inversion process and used in gas-liquid membrane contactors for CO2 absorption. Phase-inversion behavior of the polymer solutions was studied by plotting the ternary phase diagrams of polymer/solventadditive/ water. The effect of different non-solvent additives on the structure and performance of the PVDF and PSF membranes was investigated. The membranes structure was examined in terms of gas permeation, critical water entry pressure (CEPw), collapsing pressure, overall porosity, contact angle, mass transfer resistance and field emission scanning electronic microscopy (FESEM). The CO2 absorption performance of the membranes was investigated and compared with the commercial polypropylene (PP) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) hollow fiber membranes. In addition, the effect of different operating conditions on the physical and chemical CO2 flux of the PVDF membrane was also investigated. The results showed that the PSF membranes have a thicker skin layer with smaller pore sizes and lower surface porosity compared to the PVDF membranes. The PVDF membranes demonstrated low mass transfer resistance and high wetting resistance. Therefore, the hydrophobic PVDF membranes indicated an improved structure, which considerably increased the CO2 flux compared to the PSF membranes and symmetric PP and PTFE commercial membranes. A maximum CO2 flux of 8.20×10-4 mol./m2.s was achieved at the absorbent flow rate of 310 ml/min, which was approximately 110 % higher than CO2 flux of the PTFE membrane at the same operating conditions. In case of physical absorption with distilled water, a significant increase in the CO2 flux was observed as the pressure increased and the temperature decreased. However, in the case of chemical absorption with 1M sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution, the CO2 flux was significantly increased by increasing temperature, where the reaction rate was dominant. Moreover, it was found that the operation remains stable at the same gas and liquid pressure without bubble formation in the liquid phase when the liquid contacts the skin layer of the membrane. Results of the long-term study demonstrated that after a certain initial CO2 flux reduction the membrane performance maintained constant over 150 h operation. Therefore, it can be concluded that the porous hydrophobic membrane with developed structure can be a promising alternative for CO2 removal from the gas streams