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Abstract
The research of new membrane materials is continuously focusing on the challenge of removing harmful gases i.e. CO2, SO2, H2S etc that pose potential threat to the environment. In the current work mixed matrix membranes were prepared from polyvinyl acetate PVAc and titanium dioxide TiO2 using dichloromethane as a solvent and solution casing method. The resulting membranes were characterized by optical microscope, FESEM, DSC, TGA and single gas permeation. Optical microscope was used to find out the initial thickness of membranes that range from 40µm to 50µm. TiO2 particles upto 15wt% were homogenously dispersed in the polymer without aggregation as shown by the SEM results. The addition of TiO2 particles have improved the thermal stability as depicted by an increase in the Tg of mixed matrix membranes and the TGA results. Using single gas permeation, the effect of TiO2 loading, operating pressure and temperature were investigated. The obtained results show that the addition of TiO2 has increased both the permeability and selectivity. Addition of 10wt% TiO2 has increased the selectivity of gas pairs O2/N2, H2/N2 and CO2/N2 by 31.55%, 14.22% and 26.51% respectively. The permeability of N2, O2, H2 and CO2 was increased by 41.57%, 95.22%, 61.70% and 79.09% respectively. As the operating temperature was increased from 300C to 500C, permeability of all the gases was increased with a maximum of 0.8 Barrer for O2, 10.9 Barrer for H2 and 6.8 barrer for CO2 with a corresponding decrease in their selectivities over N2 at 500C. The effect of pressure in the range from 2 bar to 8 bar was almost negligible for N2 and H2, minimum for O2 and significant for CO2. Both the permeability and selectivity of CO2 were increased when the pressure was increased. The obtained results are consistent with the reported literature data.
Key words: PVAc, TiO2, Mixed matrix membrane, Perm selectivity, Thermal Stability