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The morphology and gas‐separation performance of membranes comprising multiwalled carbon nanotubes/polysulfone–Kapton
Author(s) -
Soleymanipour Seyed Farzad,
Dehaghani Amir Hossein Saeedi,
Pirouzfar Vahid,
Alihosseini Afahar
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.43839
Subject(s) - polysulfone , kapton , membrane , materials science , carbon nanotube , gas separation , chemical engineering , nanocomposite , fourier transform infrared spectroscopy , polymer chemistry , composite material , polyimide , chemistry , polymer , layer (electronics) , biochemistry , engineering
The development of desirable chemical structures and properties in nanocomposite membranes involve steps that need to be carefully designed and controlled. This study investigates the effect of adding multiwalled nanotubes (MWNT) on a Kapton–polysulfone composite membrane on the separation of various gas pairs. Data from Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy confirm that some studies on the Kapton–polysulfone blends are miscible on the molecular level. In fact, the results indicate that the chemical structure of the blend components, the Kapton–polysulfone blend compositions, and the carbon nanotubes play important roles in the transport properties of the resulting membranes. The results of gas permeability tests for the synthesized membranes specify that using a higher percentage of polysulfone (PSF) in blends resulted in membranes with higher ideal selectivity and permeability. Although the addition of nanotubes can increase the permeability of gases, it decreases gas pair selectivity. Furthermore, these outcomes suggest that Kapton–PSF membranes with higher PSF are special candidates for CO 2 /CH 4 separation compared to CO 2 /N 2 and O 2 /N 2 separation. High CH 4 , CO 2 , N 2 , and O 2 permeabilities of 0.35, 6.2, 0.34, and 1.15 bar, respectively, are obtained for the developed Kapton–PSF membranes (25/75%) with the highest percentage of carbon nanotubes (8%), whose values are the highest among all the resultant membranes. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133 , 43839.