Production of Hollow Fiber Gas Separation Membranes by Interfacial Polycondensation

Abstract

The work is devoted to the fabrication of hollow fiber thin-layer composite gas separation membranes with an internal selective layer using interfacial polycondensation followed by deposition of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer on a polysulfone membrane substrate. The effect of the concentration of amine (triethylenetetramine (TETA)) and acyl (isophthaloyl chloride (IPC)) components and the conditions of PDMS layer deposition on the change in the gas permeability of composite membranes in O₂/N₂ separation was studied. It was found that after forming the selective layer by the interfacial polycondensation method, hollow fibers with high gas permeability values (≥1000 GPU) were obtained regardless of the monomers used and their concentration, with the O₂/N₂ separation factor α being about 1. After applying an additional layer using 1–3 wt % PDMS solutions, the separation factor was 1.5–3.7. The maximum value of the separation factor was found in a fairly narrow range of TETA concentrations (0.15–0.6%) and at a certain equivalent TETA/IPC ratio. The first maximum (α O₂/N₂ = 3.5) is observed at a weight concentration ratio of TETA/IPC = 0.15/0.26, and the second maximum, at the concentration ratio of TETA/IPC = 0.6/0.15, with the permeability of the composite membranes for oxygen being 107 and 76 GPU, respectively.