Arabian Journal of Chemistry (Jan 2020)

Impact of ionic liquids on silver thermoplastic polyurethane composite membranes for propane/propylene separation

  • Yu Wang,
  • Tee Yong Goh,
  • Peter Goodrich,
  • Mert Atilhan,
  • Majeda Khraisheh,
  • David Rooney,
  • Jillian Thompson,
  • Johan Jacquemin

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 404 – 415

Abstract

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This work describes newly synthesized composite polymeric membranes and their utilization in propane/propylene separation in a gas mixture. The nonporous composite polymers were successfully synthesized by using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and several silver salts/silver salts with ionic liquids (ILs). Our studies showed that silver bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (Ag[Tf2N]) containing membranes outperformed other silver salt containing membranes in terms of selectivity. In addition, to this finding, ILs, as additives for the membranes, enhanced the selectivity by facilitating improved coordination of the olefin with the silver ions in the dense composite polymers. Keywords: Membrane separation, Composite polymer, Ionic liquids, Propane/propylene separation