Ghader Khanbabaei - Research Institute of Petroleum Industry- Pazhouheshgah Blvd.- Khairabad - Qom Road-Tehran-Iran
Jamal Aalaei
Ali Rahmatpour
Alireza Khoshniat

Using membranes for separation of gases, vapors and liquids in oil, gas and petrochemical industries is an attractive process in comparison with conventional separation processes such as distillation, absorption, and adsorption, because membranes are low-cost, energy efficient and green technology. Their widespread use in gas separations has, however, been limited by the difficulty of preparing membranes with the desirable combination of high selectivity, which yields high product purity and low operating costs, and high permeability, which reduces membrane area and capital cost. Unfortunately, as the selectivity of conventional polymer membrane materials increases, permeability decreases and vice versa. The need for membranes with optimized properties was activated many researches in this field and development of hybrid or nanocomposite membranes is one of the recent contributions. In this research, using special rubbery and glassy polymers and with the aim of nanotechnology for improvement of polymer properties, nanocomposite membranes are synthesized which have the ability of high permeability and reverse selectivity. The later ability means that large molecules such as butane permeate faster than small molecules such as methane or nitrogen through membranes. This ability eliminates the recompression process after separation in applications such as natural gas purification. The results showed over 100% increase in permeation coefficients of nanocomposite membranes compare to ordinary membranes.

polymeric membranes, nanocomposite, gas separation, reverse selectivity