Crosslinked Polyimide Hollow Fiber Membranes for CO2 Removal from Natural Gas: From Laboratory to Field (Featured talk)

Polymeric hollow fiber membranes can remove CO₂ from natural gas with compact modular systems that have a small footprint and low operating cost, making them especially attractive for offshore applications.  While these membranes have demonstrated attractive performance in selectivity and productivity, the sensitivity of the polymer membrane to impurities and harsh conditions continues to be a drawback.  These impurities, such as C₃+ hydrocarbons, as well as a high partial pressure of CO₂, due to its enhanced solubility in glassy polymers, can lead to swelling (plasticization) of the polymer, resulting in a loss of selectivity.  This has led to considerable research in polyimides containing crosslinkable groups within the chains which, upon crosslinking, have shown significantly more resilience to degradation by impurities or high CO₂ pressure.  Such crosslinkable groups include carboxylic acids which can then form chemically crosslinked bonds with multifunctional alcohols.  Chevron’s proprietary XLP (Cross-Linked Polyimide) hollow fiber membrane technology, developed in a joint program with Georgia Tech, offers both high flux and high selectivity, and attractive robustness for CO₂/CH₄ separation.  This presentation will cover these aspects of XLP membranes: 

1. The evolution of XLP membranes from university R&D to industrial bench-scale
2. How advanced gas-separation membranes, such as XLP create value from an end-user perspective
3. Performance testing of XLP membranes, from clean laboratory environments to harsh field conditions
4. Commercialization aspects of XLP and areas for further performance optimization