(6jl) CO2 Removal Using Highly Permeable, Ultra Thin and Well Oriented SAPO-34 Zeolite Membrane Synthesized By a Novel Four-Step Method

Teaching Interests: Chemical engineering courses

Abstract:

Despite the various effective methods previously proposed to improve the synthesis of zeolite membranes, reducing production costs along with enhancing separation performance are still essential prerequisites for developing zeolite membranes in industrial scale CO₂ removal applications.

In this study a five-step method was proposed to synthesize ultra-thin, high-permeable and well-oriented SAPO-34 membranes. Using this method, zeolite crystals were oriented well, membrane thickness was controlled easily and the membrane permeability was increased significantly without scarifying the selectivity.

Based on the results, our study aimed at highlighting the advantages of the step-by-step synthesis method for the production of highly-permeable and reproducible SAPO-34 membranes.

In this study, the crystallographic preferred orientation index (CPO) was adopted to SAPO-34 zeolite membranes for the first time. Furthermore, the effects of proposed methods on performance of synthesized membranes were innovatively evaluated via CPO values.

The synthesized SAPO-34 zeolite membranes were also tested in an equimolar CO₂/CH₄ separation process as well as a membrane adsorption test.

The surprisingly high CO₂ permeance of 3.2×10^-6 mol m^-2 s^-1 pa along with the high separation and adsorption selectivities of 141 and 116, respectively, were obtained for a < 2 μm thickness SAPO-34 membrane.