Parametric Study of CO2/CH4 Separation Using Hollow Fiber Membrane: Effect of Impurities

This report shows my research study on hollow fiber membrane module in carbon dioxide separation from natural gas, methane with heavy hydrocarbon as impurities, Hexane. In gas exploration field, presence of carbon dioxide causes most gas reservoir are economically unfeasible and ends up undeveloped. It is because carbon dioxide is highly corrosive when dissolved in water, and it will rapidly destroy pipelines and other equipment. There are other current technologies used to separate carbon dioxide from natural gas such as amine adsorption technology. However, amine absorption technology is expensive and having large equipment size, which is inconvenient to install in offshore platform. Compared to amine absorption technology, hollow fiber membrane is a better option since it has high reliability, cheaper and space saving. However, there are limited studies done on hollow fiber membrane although it developed over 30 years ago. Researches are done for ternary and binary feed which will further discussed in later chapter. But, there is a gap which initiates my research that is studying parametric effect of impurities of heavy hydrocarbon, hexane on separation of carbon dioxide from methane gas. Limited literatures are found for this tittle. Therefore, this research will definitely contributes more understanding for hollow fiber membrane gas separation technologies.