A simple one-step technology of wire electrospinning is presented for the manufacturing of air-permeable CO2-capturing membranes, easily transferable to industrial production lines. The design of the chemically-modified polyurethane nanofiber membranes for CO2 capture was based on a combination of molecular modeling and technological experiments using one-step electrospinning (i.e., a modifying agent dissolved directly in a spinning solution). Polyurethane (PUR Larithane), chemically modified by TETA/TEPA amines, was used in the present study for the membrane design. Special attention was paid to two key parameters significant for the design of the functional unit, i.e., the CO2 sorption capacity and air permeability which depended on the amine concentration. The optimal combination of these parameters was found for the PUR/TEPA membrane (5 wt.% of TEPA in spinning solution): the sorption capacity was 13.97 cm3/g with an air permeability of 0.020 m/s. Molecular modeling proved to be a valuable tool that helped to clarify, at the molecular level, the structure of chemically-modified nanofibrous membranes.
