Synthesis and analysis of novel polymers with high permselectivity and permeability in gas separation applications. Final report

During the three years of support under this grant, ten novel polymer structures have been synthesized and characterized in detail in terms of sorption and transport properties to test the hypotheses on strategies to develop advanced materials for gas separation membranes. The extremely important O{sub 2}/N{sub 2} and CO{sub 2}/CH{sub 4} systems have been the focus of this work. Data for permeabilities and permselectivities for O{sub 2}/N{sub 2} and CO{sub 2}/CH{sub 4} at 35 C at approximately 2 atm feed pressure for O{sub 2} and N{sub 2} and 10 atm for CO{sub 2} and CH{sub 4} are reported in two tables and will be discussed in two parts, one related to each of the groups of structures in these two tables. For the sake of efficiency, the author will only consider the O{sub 2}/N{sub 2} data; however, similar trends apply for the CO{sub 2}/CH{sub 4} system as well. This gas pair is useful, since solubility selectivity effects are generally of much smaller importance than for the CO{sub 2}/CH{sub 4} pair, so even without detailed solubility and diffusivity data, mobility selectivity based arguments tend to be adequate