Natural gas feeds often contain contaminants such as CO₂, H₂S, H₂O, and small hydrocarbons. Carbon dioxide is a major contaminant reducing the heating value of the gas and causing pipeline corrosion, so CO₂ level should be lowered to
below 2% to meet the United States pipeline specifications. Membrane separation technology can be advantageous over cryogenic distillation and amine adsorption in terms of cost and efficiency. The key hurdle to overcome in polymeric membrane separation technology is improvement in selectivity, productivity, and durability without introducing significant additional cost. The ultimate goal of this study is to analyze effects due to polymerization
conditions and imidization methods on properties of 1,3-propanediol monoesterified crosslinkable polyimide (PDMC). Hillock, Omole, Ward, and Ma did work on PDMC synthesis; however, variability of polymer properties remains a challenge that must be overcome for industrial implementation of PDMC material. First, reaction temperature and reaction time of polymerization prior to
imidization were considered as key conditions to affect molecular weight, crosslinkability and transport properties of polymer. Batches with controlled reaction
temperature and time were prepared, and properties of each dense film were measured and optimized in terms of permeability, selectivity, and plasticization suppression. Second, imidization methods for PDMC were also studied. There are mainly two kinds of Imidization: chemical Imidization and thermal Imidization. Surprisingly,
thermally imidized PDMC showed 70% higher permeability than chemically imidized samples with minimal acrifice in selectivity. At high reaction temperature during the thermal imidization, transamidation can occur. It is believed that the transamidation
led to more randomized sequence distribution in the thermally imidized samples. We thus hypothesize that the higher permeability of the thermally imidized PDMC results
from greater uniformity of the sequence distribution, as compared to the chemically
imidized sample that does not experience high temperature during imidization. XRD, DSC, DMA, and permeation instruments checked and supported this hypothesis. FTIR, TGA, and NMR ruled out the possibility of an alternate hypothesis related to side reaction. Finally, effects of aggressive feed conditions on both chemically imidized
PDMC and thermally imidized PDMC dense film were examined. The aggressive feed conditions include high CO₂ partial pressure, operating temperatures, and exposure to high feed pressure. Testing aggressive feed conditions for dense film should be pursued before pursuing hollow fiber applications, to decouple effects on the basic material from those on the more complex asymmetric morphology. This study enables understanding of the disparity between various previous
researchers’ selectivity and permeability values. The work shows clearly that polymerization conditions and imidization methods must be specified and controlled to achieve consistently desirable polymer properties. In addition, for batch scale-up and development to a hollow fiber, this fundamental study should enable production of high molecular weight PDMC with good fiber spinnability and defect-free structure.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GATECH/oai:smartech.gatech.edu:1853/48938 |
| Date | 16 September 2013 |
| Creators | Kim, Danny Jinsoo |
| Contributors | Koros, William J. |
| Publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | Georgia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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