(317g) Asymmetric Carbon Molecular Sieve Membranes Based on Poly(Phenylene Oxide) for Gas Separation

Carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes have recently emerged as a promising gas separation processes especially for the production of oxygen enriched air, recovery of CO₂ from natural gas, purification of H₂, and separation of olefin/paraffin mixtures. In earlier studies, a variety of precursors such as polyimide, polyacrylonitrile, phenolic resin, poly(furfuryl alcohol) and others have been applied to carbon molecular sieve membranes. The most popular precursor of reported carbon membranes is related to polyimide due to their high thermal stabilities and excellent gas separation performances, however, the greater material cost constrains their commercial availabilities. We have been investigating the carbon molecular sieve membranes for gas separation using poly(phenylene oxide) (PPO) as one of the alternative precursors instead of conventional ones such as polyimide. PPO offers a lot of advantages such as cost performance, high thermal stability, widespread availability and easy modification with functional groups. In our previous study, we synthesized PPO derivatives with various functional groups in one?step reaction. We found that the resulting PPO based carbon membranes provided excellent O₂/ N₂ separation performances comparable to the polyimide based carbon membranes. To develop these membranes for commercial application, we fabricated asymmetric hollow fiber carbon membranes using well?known dry/wet spinning process and these gas transport properties were investigated in this study.