Development of Mass Production Technology of Highly Permeable Nano-Porous Supports for Silica-Based Separation Membranes.

ABSTRACT: Silica-based membranes show both robust properties and high-permeability, offering us great potential for applying them to harsh conditions where conventional organic membranes cannot work. Despite the increasing number of paper and patents of silica-based membranes, their industrial applications have yet to be fully realized, possibly due to their lack of technologies on scaling-up and mass production. In particular, quality of membrane supports decisively impacts final quality of silica-based separation membranes. In this study, therefore, we have developed mass producing technologies of nano-porous supports (? 12 mm, length 400 mm) with surface center pore size distribution of 1-10 nm, which are generally used as supports for preparing separation membranes with a pore size of less than 1 nm. The developed mass production apparatuses have enabled us to reproducibly produce nano-porous silica-based supports with high permeance (e.g., N₂ permeance of more than 10^-5 mol m^-2 s^-1·Pa^-1) minimizing effects of membrane defects less than 0.1% of the total flux. The developed nano-porous supports have enabled us to reproducibly produce silica-based separation membranes with high permeace and selectivity (e.g., H₂ permeance of about 5 × 10^-6 mol m^-2 s^-1 Pa^-1 and H₂/SF₆ permeance ratio of more than 2000).

SUBMITTER: Sawamura KI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6723781 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature