Effect of Different Additives on Separation Performance of Flat Sheet PVDF Membrane Contactor

This paper investigates effects of different additives on morphology and subsequently, separation performance of asymmetric flat sheet polyvinylidene fluoride (pvdf) membranes to separate co2 using membrane contractor. five different additives from different chemi- cal families including lithium chloride (salt), polyethylene glycol 400 (polymer), glycerol (weak anti-solvents), methanol (alcohols) and acetic acid (weak secondary solvents) were used for controlling the morphology of the fabricated membranes. the fabricated pvdf mem- branes were applied to separate co2 from a gas mixture of (20/80 wt/ wt) co2/n2 by contacting with (20/80 wt/wt) monoethanolamine/ h2o as absorbent. the investigations revealed that among the all con- sidered additives, glycerol has the most promising effect on the perfor- mance of co2 separation from the feed gas mixture. effects of opera- tional parameters such as flow rate and temperature of absorbents on the separation performance were also studied. investigations showed that the lowest level of temperature (30 ◦c) and the highest level of the flow rate of absorbent (500 mljmin) provide better separation per- formance. additionally, the presence of glycerol increased absorption performance (ή) from 0.63 to 0.78 (at the lowest level of flow rate) and from 0.79 to 0.91 (at the highest level of flow rate) compared to the bare pvdf membranes.