Membranes (Nov 2022)

Membranes Based on PTMSP/PVTMS Blends for Membrane Contactor Applications

  • Denis Kalmykov,
  • Alexey Balynin,
  • Alexey Yushkin,
  • Evgenia Grushevenko,
  • Stepan Sokolov,
  • Alexander Malakhov,
  • Alexey Volkov,
  • Stepan Bazhenov

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12111160
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 11
p. 1160

Abstract

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In this work, perspective polymeric materials were developed for membrane contactor applications, e.g., for the dissolved oxygen removal from amine CO2 capture solvents. Several polymeric blends based on poly[1-trimethylsilyl-1-propyne] (PTMSP) and poly[vinyltrimethylsilane] (PVTMS) were studied. The gas and water vapor sorption and permeability coefficients for the PTMSP/PVTMS blend membranes at different PVTMS contents (0–100%) were obtained under temperatures of 30 and 60 °C for the first time. As the PVTMS content increases, the O2 and CO2 permeabilities decrease by 160 and 195 times at 30 °C, respectively. The fractional accessible volume of the polymer blends decreases accordingly. The transport of the CO2 capture solvent vapors through the PTMSP/PVTMS blend membranes were determined in thermo-pervaporation (TPV) mode using aqueous monoethanolamine (30%), N-methyldiethanolamine (40%), and 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (30%) solutions as model amine solvents at 60 °C. The membranes demonstrated high pervaporation separation factors with respect to water, resulting in low amine losses. A joint analysis of the gas permeabilities and aqueous alkanolamine TPV data allowed us to conclude that the polymer blend composition of PTMSP/PVTMS 70/30 provides an optimal combination of a sufficiently high oxygen permeability and the pervaporation separation factor at a temperature of 60 °C.

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