Properties and characteristic of amine-polymer blend membrane

Polymer blend technology has earned a significant position in the field of polymer science. Current membrane technology can easily and simply remove and separates carbon dioxide as pressure, temperature, costs, and energy requirements are low. There is also no corrosion problem from the straightforward process of removing CO2 from natural gas, especially in remote or offshore locations that are easily scaled up. However, glassy polymeric membranes suffer from a lack of permeability causing performance degradation and higher selectivity. Nevertheless, amine solutions are capable of purifying naturally acidic gas. Within this framework, the blending of the polysulfone (PSU) glassy polymer with amines such as diethanolamine (DEA), methyl diethanolamine (MDEA), and monoethanolamine (MEA) in a dimethylacetamide solvent, resulted in the development of flat sheet membranes with the desired properties. The findings showed good miscibility between PSU and amines blends, all the original functional groups were shown by FTIR. The synthesized amine polymer blend membrane were found to have homogenous surfaces and a packed bed sphere structure (PBSS) as shown by FESEM images. Furthermore the addition of different amine solution, have increased the size of PBSS due to incorporation of amine molecule into the sphere. (author)