(537a) Metal-Organic Framework Membrane Process for High Purity CO2 Production

The development of the membrane process for CO₂ capture or separation has been of great interest from the energy and environmental perspectives. Current CO₂ separation membrane technologies are dominated by polymeric membranes due to their low cost and easy processibility.However, polymeric membranes suffer from CO₂-induced plasticization and the trade-off between permeability and selectivity. Zeolite membranes have also been extensively studied for CO₂/N₂ and CO₂/CH₄ separation during the past decade. Although some of them have demonstrated high selectivity for CO₂ over CH₄ or N₂, their CO₂ permeance needs to be further improved to be economically viable.Gas separation by metal-organic framework (MOF) membranes is an emerging research field. Their commercial application potential is however still rarely explored due in part to unsatisfied separation characteristics and difficulty in finding suitable applications. Herein, we report â??sharp molecular sievingâ? properties of high quality isoreticular MOF-1 (IRMOF-1) membrane for CO₂ separation from dry, CO₂ enriched CO₂/CH₄ and CO₂/N₂ mixtures. The IRMOF-1 membranes exhibit CO₂/CH₄ and CO₂/N₂ separation factors of 328 and 410 with CO₂ permeance of 2.55Ã?10^-7 and 2.06Ã?10^-7 mol m^-2 s^-1 Pa^-1 at feed pressure of 5 atm and 298 K, respectively. High grade CO₂ is efficiently produced from the industrial or lower grade CO₂ feed gas by this MOF membrane separation process.