Fabrication of Polymeric Membranes for Gas Separation

Today, gases and vapor separation using membranes has become a highly efficient and sustainable technological process that successfully competes with traditional separation processes such as distillation, adsorption, or extraction. Membrane separation processes are considered as a consolidated technology, that can ensure energy savings, environmental protection as well as sustainable industrial growth. However, the trade-off relationship between permeability and selectivity, governed by the Robeson upper bound, has limited the use of polymeric membranes in gas separation. The development of membrane materials with high permeability and selectivity is a key challenge for efficient CO2 separation. High selectivity is essential to achieve the purity target at a low energy cost, and high permeability is required to minimize the membrane surface area and related to cost. The challenge is then to push the material performances to the right upper side of the Robeson plot, towards higher permeabilities and selectivities.