RAPID

Processing natural gas is the largest industrial application of gas separation membranes. Membranes occupy 10% of the ~$5 billion worldwide annual market for new natural gas separation equipment, with amine absorption accounting for most of the rest. While widely used, amine systems suffer from corrosion, complex process design, and equipment often unsuitable for offshore gas processing platforms. Amine systems are also less efficient than membranes at high CO2 concentrations. Current membrane systems are most commonly based on asymmetric cellulose acetate polymers and suffer from lower CO2/CH4 selectivity and lower fluxes than are needed for more general adoption. Low selectivity means that such systems are often multi-stage, requiring expensive recompression of exhaust gas to extract more hydrocarbon product from it or resulting in greater losses of hydrocarbon product to waste streams. Low fluxes impact the overall size and cost of membrane equipment to treat a given quantify of natural gas. This project will prepare and characterize novel nanocomposite membranes based on recently discovered metal organic framework (MOF) materials and related nanoparticles having outstanding separation properties for removal of acid gases (e.g., CO2) from natural gas. The project aims to demonstrate advanced nanocomposite membranes with much higher flux and selectivity than commercial state-of-the-art membranes when separating CO2 from mixtures with CH4 and mixtures containing aromatic contaminants. Membrane systems based on such membranes would be several times smaller than existing systems to process comparable amounts of gas and lower the hydrocarbon losses, thereby increasing energy efficiency and minimizing emissions/waste.