(149c) Engineering the Performance of Carbon Molecular Sieve Membranes through the Use of Oxygen Doping

Carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes are formed from the high temperature pyrolysis of polymeric membranes. Due to the molecular sieving nanostructure of CMS membranes, the separation performance has been proven to exceed that of polymer membranes, even those produced from pre-commercial, high performance polymers. The separation performance of CMS membranes is influenced by a variety of processing parameters including the precursor polymer composition, the pyrolysis temperature profile, and various pre-and post-treatments This study will review the discovery and development of another tool for engineering the nano-structure of CMS membranes through the use of oxygen-doping. This method has been developed and utilized to tune the microstructure of CMS membranes for a variety of industrially important gas pairs including CO2/CH4, O2/N2, and ethane/ethylene.