Commercial Development of a Thermally Rearranged (TR) Hollow Fiber Membrane for Natural Gas Sweetening

For nearly 4 decades, cellulose acetate (CA) and cellulose triacetate materials have dominated the membrane market for natural gas sweetening and enhanced oil recovery applications. While attractive novel polymer materials have been identified by academia and industry over the years for CO₂ and CH₄ separations such as these, few have been developed into commercially viable products for a variety of reasons. Air Products PRISM^® Membranes has developed a new polymer and membrane based on the thermal rearrangement (TR) technology licensed from Hanyang University that performs significantly better than current commercially available materials across a wide range of operating conditions for natural gas sweetening and EOR applications. This presentation will describe the process employed for the new polymer development, present performance data for the hollow fiber membrane, and provide comparative examples of total system ownership costs for this new membrane compared to current commercial membrane systems.