Experimental Study On Hydrogen Recovery Using Hollow Fiber Composite Membrane

As one of membrane technologies, Gas separation has many advantages such asfew investment, less energy consumption, simple operation and control and nopollution, has outstanding technical advantages and promising application prospectsin the hydrogen recovery. Separation performance of gas separation process mainlydepends on the property of membrane.Hydrogen recovery process from refinery dry gas based on hollow fibercomposite membranes is one of the crucial and effective methods. The silicone rubber/polysulfone hollow fiber composite membranes were prepared by dip-coatingmethod. The suitable formula and operation conditions for preparing the compositemembrane were found.The effects of the concentration of PDMS, the amount of crosslinker and catalyst,the temperature of heat treatment of base-membrane, the number of coating and otherfactors which may affect the performances of the composite membranes wereinvestigated, and then by analyzing these factors, the suitable formula and operationconditions for preparing the composite membrane were found. The effects of the feedpressure, flow rate, temperature and the partial pressure of hydrogen in permeate gason the performance of the homemade membranes and commercial membranes for gasseparation were also investigated. The result indicated that the homemade PDMS/PScomposite membranes can be used in separation performance;the self-mademembranes with separation factor 40 and permeance 16 GPU, while the commercialmembranes correspondingly with separation factor 52 and permeance 31 GPU.The structure of silicone rubber, polysulfone membrane,hollow fiber compositemembranes and commercial membrane for gas separation were analyzed by IR, SEMand TEM method. Information of functional groups in membranes was given byFT-IR;Morphological analysis was given by SEM spectra;internal structure analysiswas given by TEM. The result indicated crosslinking reaction of PDMS occurred;thethickness of the active layer was uniform;the amount of crosslinker and catalystaffected the internal structure of membrane.