Model-based analysis of polymeric membranes performance in high pressure CO₂ removal from natural gas

Penetrant-induced plasticization is known to be one of the main challenges of high-pressure membrane separation of CO₂ from natural gas. Therefore, a procedure that integrates experimental and mathematical models was developed to analyze the performance of polymeric membranes for removal of CO₂ at high feed pressure. A semi-empirical model for estimating plasticization pressure and permeability parameters at plasticization from permeation test data was proposed and tested on more than 90 polymeric membranes. Three model parameters (α₁, α₂ , and α₃) were obtained and used to evaluate membrane performance in terms of plasticization pressure as well as permeability and productivity loss at plasticization pressure. Results from the analysis revealed that this set of parameters can be simply employed to evaluate membrane performance at high pressure.