High-performance carbon molecular sieve membranes for hydrogen purification and pervaporation dehydration of organic solvents

P. H.Tchoua Ngamou*, M. E. Ivanova, O. Guillon, W. A. Meulenberg

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

34 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Ultrathin (∼200 nm) and defect-free carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes were successfully fabricated on the inner surface of hierarchically structured porous supports (γ-Al2O3 layer coated α-Al2O3 tubes) via pyrolysis of a polyimide precursor at 700 °C. The chemical structure of the carbonized samples was examined in detail by means of Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. From these studies, it was found that the carbonized samples consist of graphitic carbon layers containing sp3-type defects. The synthesized CMS membranes showed an unprecedentedly high H2 permeance of up to 1.1 × 10-6 mol m-2 s-1 Pa-1 and ideal separation factors of 24, 130 and 228 for H2/CO2, H2/N2 and H2/CH4, respectively at 200 °C. Furthermore, outstanding separation factors of 791 and 1946 with a water flux of about 0.5 kg m-2 h-1 were obtained at 70 °C for the pervaporation of 10 wt% water-containing binary mixtures of methanol and ethanol, respectively. These results unambiguously show that the carbon membranes developed in this work possess the potential for high-temperature hydrogen purification and dewatering of organic solvents.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)7082-7091
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Materials Chemistry A
Volume7
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Mar 2019

Keywords

  • n/a OA procedure

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