Matrimid polyimide membranes for the separation of carbon dioxide from methane

Abstract Three types of polyimide membranes viz., Matrimid, Kapton and P84, were prepared by solution casting and solvent evaporation method to study the permeation of CO2 and CH4 gases. Barrier properties were investigated as a function of feed pressure for pure gases and feed composition for the binary mixtures of CO2 and CH4. Kapton polyimide, prepared by imidization of polyamic acid, showed an increase in permeability, but reduction in selectivity, due to the occurrence of plasticization at higher feed CO2 concentrations. Matrimid was found to exhibit the highest permeability and was studied in greater detail, due to the feasibility in its scale‐up into a hollow fiber modular configuration for commercial application. Matrimid was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and X‐ray diffractometry (XRD) to assess the intermolecular interactions and to understand the separation profiles. The effect of feed flow was evaluated by studying the permeation behavior of flat sheet membrane in dead‐end operation mode with the hollow fiber module operated in crossflow feed mode. For pure gases, Matrimid hollow fiber membrane exhibited a CO2 permeability of 12.7 Barrers with a CO2/CH4 selectivity of 40 at the feed pressure of 20 bar. At the same pressure, for binary mixture feed of 5 mol % CO2 in methane, the module gave a permeability of 7.4 Barrers with a selectivity of 21. The total binary mixture permeability was determined at the feed CO2 concentrations varying from 0 to 20 mol % to demonstrate the preferential sorption of CO2 in Matrimid membrane. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007