Preparation and Carbon Dioxide Separation Performance of a Hollow Fiber Supported Ionic Liquid Membrane

In this study, we prepared polyethersulfone hollow fibers using double colaminar flow in a coaxial microfluidic device. The structures of the hollow fibers were adjusted by changing the composition of the dope solution. The produced hollow fibers were used as a support for room temperature ionic liquids to study their potential for carbon dioxide/nitrogen separation. The stability of supported ionic liquid membranes with different structures was evaluated using two different ionic liquids. The effect of the permeate direction and the support structure on the pure gas permeability and ideal selectivity was also studied. The ideal selectivity, represented by the ratio between the permeabilities of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, was compared with data in the literature described by the Robeson upper bound correlation. High selectivity values obtained for carbon dioxide compared with those for nitrogen indicated that the produced supported ionic liquid membranes have good potential for carbon dioxide separation processes.