Polyether based block copolymer membranes for CO2 separation

The work described in this thesis is dedicated to the development of polymericmembrane materials for the separation of CO2 from light gases, and in particularto the separation of CO2 from nitrogen as required in a post-combustion captureconguration for the separation of CO2 from flue gases. An attractive group ofmaterials for this separation are multi-block copolymers containing polyether based soft segments, as they combine a reasonably high CO2 permeability with a suciently high CO2/N2 selectivity. Examples of such polymeric membrane materials are the wellknown, commercially available, block copolymer families PEBAX® and PolyActive®.Their practical use is nonetheless limited as obtained gas permeabilities are too low for an economically viable process. In this thesis two dierent design strategies to tune and signicantly increase the performance of polyether based multi-block copolymer membranes are investigated.