RSC Advances Blog

Scientists from Singapore have investigated the effect of various salts on facilitated transport membranes for carbon dioxide (CO₂) separation.

The addition of salts to polymeric membranes has proven to be a practical way to improve their permselectivity for gas separation. In this work, Rong Wang and Lizhi Zhang from the Nanyang Technical University looked into whether or not this could be applied to CO₂separation.  They found that with the addition of NaF salt, the permeance of N₂ was significantly reduced (by a factor 9.4) – far more so than for CO₂ (reduced by a factor of 1.5). 

The authors also introduced polyoxometalates (POMs) as oxysalts into the membranes.  Whilst the permeance of CO₂through the membranes was much lower, the permselectivity of CO₂ over N₂was much greater.  Due to their unique properties, POMs can be considered as attractive additives to membranes for CO₂ separation.

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Salting-out effect on facilitated transport membranes for CO₂separation: From fluoride salt to polyoxometalates, Lizhi Zhang and Rong Wang, RSC Adv., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2RA20882B