Water vapor separation from flue gas using MOF incorporated thin film nanocomposite hollow fiber membranes

First time it is proposed that metal organic framework (MOF) incorporated thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membrane drastically enhances the water vapor transport performance from the mixture gas. The incorporation of MOF nanoparticles in a polymer matrix has afforded a new approach for the preparation of membranes with enhanced water vapor permeance, and selectivity. In this work we have synthesized the MOF material and incorporated it in monomer solution to make TFN membrane via interfacial polymerization method. Polysulfone (PSf) hollow fiber membranes have been used as substrate material for the coating of thin nanocomposite layer. The m-phenylene diamine (MPD) and trimesoyl chloride (TMC) were used as the monomer solutions for interfacial polymerization (IP) reaction. The small quantity loading of MOF particles plays a vital role for water vapor transport through the TFN membranes. Synthesized MOF material and prepared membranes were well characterized using different physicochemical analysis techniques including Attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transformed infrared (ATR-FTIR), atomic force microscopy (AFM), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and water contact angle (WCA). The water vapor permeance was increased from 785 GPU, for thin film composite (TFC) membrane, to 2244 GPU (MOF@TFN3) with the selectivity being enhanced from 116 to 542 when the NH₂-MIL-125(Ti) MOF (amine-functionalized titanium metal organic framework) nanoparticles content was 0.1 w/w% with respect to monomer solution.