Synthesis and Characterization of Santa Barbara Amorphous (SBA-15) for CO2/CH4 Separation

This project main focus is to identify the potential inorganic filler to be used for mixed matrix membrane (MMM) fabrication. The properties of polymeric membrane have been well understood as it is widely implemented in current industry. The identified inorganic filler is Santa Barbara Amorphous (SBA-15) mesoporous silica. It will be synthesized in nano-scale to answer the problem of particle agglomeration faced by current membrane research. Having considerably high CO2 permeability and CO2/CH4 selectivity, SBA-15 is then being functionalized with amino-propyl group by incorporating APTES onto the surface of the silica to further enhance its performance. Polysulfone (PSf) is chosen to be the polymer for this project. MMM of PSf/pristine SBA-15 and PSF/modified SBA-15 are fabricated and characterized to observe its morphology in supporting gas separation performance. TGA result shows almost all membranes share the similar onset decomposition temperature at around 500°C. FESEM analysis shows there are minimal interfacial voids formed between SBA-15 fillers and PSf polymer chain, which indicates that there is good adhesion between the filler and polymer chosen. Although the distribution of SBA-15 filler get better when its loading increases, particles agglomeration is observed to be increasing as well. Hence, SBA-15 with 3wt% loading is concluded to be the optimum percentage to be incorporated into MMM. From the result interpretation, it is believed that MMMs with incorporation of either pristine or functionalized SBA-15 fillers are expected to enhance its gas separation performance, as comparison to that of PSf membrane.