Membranas poliméricas híbridas contendo nanopartículas inorgânicas funcionalizadas para separação de gases

Abstract

The fossil fuels are the main sources currently used for obtaining energy. With the burning of these gases, the emission of various gases in the atmosphere occurs, and the great increase in their concentration makes them harmful to the environment, especially the CO2, causing one of the most worrisome environmental problems that the world faces nowadays, the stove effect. Among the most favorable technologies for the removal of CO2, the membrane separation process has stood out because it is a clean technology, with reduced maintenance costs, easy incorporation in the industries, low energy consumption, high coefficient of packaging, besides of non-use of organic solvents. In an attempt to improve the performance of existing membranes for this separation, we have sought to explore the synthesis of mixed matrix membranes (MMM) with different polymers and inorganic fillers, which is the object of this study. Specifically, the objective was to develop polyurethane MMMs containing silica nanoparticles loaded with amine grouping to promote a facilitated transport by evaluating the effect of operational variables such as dispersed particle concentration, pressure and operating temperature. The most promising results were shown at low pressures (1 bar), where the best performance of the polyurethane membrane with 20% (m / m) of functionalized nanometric silica was observed, with a permeability of 80.86 for CO2 and selectivity of 106.39 for CO2 versus N2 and 20.47 for CO2 versus CH4.