Gas Separation Using Furanic-Based Polymer Membranes – Project H2 2020

Membrane gas separation is a financially significant and technologically critical component of the gas purification industry as it offers capital and operating cost advantages compared to other gas separation methods such as distillation, absorption, and adsorption. Many new polymer membrane materials have been proposed in recent years, but too often the cost of those materials and the inability to source commercial quantities prevent membrane manufacturers from developing new products. This project plans on addressing those drawbacks by introducing a new family of renewable, high-performance furanic-based polymers. Work in this project will focus on furanic-based polymer selection, hollow-fiber development, material characterization, and membrane testing for hydrogen recovery from mixed gas streams (e.g. H2/CO, H2/CO2, H2/N2/NH3) for commercial applications. Preliminary work on permeation tests has shown promising results, and the membrane separators have the potential to reduce capital costs by 10x, increase H2 recovery energy efficiency by 20% all while reducing the cost of separation by 20% and reducing waste by 20%.