Investigation of competitive sorption and plasticization of hyperaged CANAL ladder polymers for acid gas purification

  • Jing Ying Yeo
  • , Francesco M. Benedetti
  • , Benjamin J. Pedretti
  • , Ashley M. Robinson
  • , Ruilin Yin
  • , Holden W.H. Lai
  • , Tae Hoon Lee
  • , Yan Xia
  • , Zachary P. Smith

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Identifying membrane materials that have exceptional separation performance and stability to complex CO2-containing mixtures is a pressing topic in separation science. In this work, the membrane separation performance for a recently discovered class of contorted polymers synthesized via catalytic arene-norbornene annulation (CANAL) polymerization is presented. These CANAL polymers achieve high CO2/CH4 selectivity of 68 after physical aging (up to ∼1 year), which significantly augments the size-sieving capabilities of the membranes. Binary CO2/CH4 and ternary H2S/CO2/CH4 testing result in a 41 % and 50 % enhancement in selectivities, respectively, for hyperaged (∼1 year) contorted CANAL polymers, highlighting their size-sieving capabilities. The remarkably high CO2/CH4 mixed-gas and combined acid gas (CAG, (CO2+H2S)/CH4) selectivities of 88 and 95, respectively, for CANAL-Me-S5F in particular surpass both the 2018 CO2/CH4 mixed-gas and CAG upper bounds. Performance stability was also investigated for high concentrations of CO2, revealing a reduction in CO2/CH4 mixed-gas selectivity without compromising CO2 permeability, suggesting strong sorption of CO2 but minimal plasticization effects for short testing periods. Conversely, time-dependent plasticization shows negligible effects on CO2/CH4 mixed-gas selectivity despite an increase in CO2 permeability when exposed to high concentrations of plasticizing CO2 over an extended period of 170 h. This study provides valuable insights into hyperaged CANAL polymers and their performance in practical industrial processes.

Original languageEnglish
Article number123973
JournalJournal of Membrane Science
Volume726
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2025
Externally publishedYes

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