Development of Blend Ionic Liquid Glassy Membrane for CO2/CH4 Gas Separation

Natural gas generally contains large amount of methane along with heavier hydrocarbons. Also it often consists of non-hydrocarbon, such as carbon dioxide which need to be removed due to its effect on pipeline quality. There are different technologies that has been used for natural gas treatment which are adsorption process, absorption process, cryogenic condensation but because of some limitation there is a new method has been developed known as membrane. Polymeric membrane is the most use membrane in industry but Because of existence of some limitation, blend ionic liquid glassy membrane has been introduced. This blend membrane has been developed by adding ionic liquid (IL): 1-Ethyl-3- Methylimidazolium Trifluoromethanesulfonate ([emim][CF3SO3]) in three different concentration into the polymer. The blend ionic liquid glassy membrane was casted manually and fabricated by using dry-phase inversion. The membranes were characterized by SEM, FTIR and DSC in terms of morphology, composition and glass transition temperature which in this study the membranes were dense and nonporous in terms of morphology, in terms of composition it can be observed that by adding IL there is a significant change in wave number which showed the addition of IL. In terms of glass transition temperature, the analysis showed an increase. In regards to gas performance in terms of permeability and selectivity, from the analysis it can be observed the selectivity in 10 bar is increasing from 1.143 to 12.669, same changes can be seen for 12 and 14 bar. In terms of permeability for CO2 in 10 bar it can be observed that it is increasing from 4×10-7 to 1×10-6 although for CH4 it can be seen that in 10 bar it is decreasing from 3.5×10-7 to 1×10-7.also the same changes can be seen in higher pressure of 12 and 14 bar.it also can be seen by increasing the pressure the permeability for CO2 in 10 bar was decreasing from 4×10-7 to 1.24×10-7. Same changes can be seen for CH4.