LAUSR

Abstract Separation of CO2/CH4 is an essential process in methane-based fuel gas production. The membrane system is currently developed for gas separation due to its small footprint, low capital cost and operating cost, environmentally friendly, and process flexibility. The main purpose of research in the membrane for gas separation is to develop novel membranes with high performance, following by high permeability and selectivity. In this paper, nano-hybrid polyethersulfone (PES) membranes contained nano TiO2 are fabricated and evaluated for CO2 removal. The nano-hybrid PES membranes are fabricated using dry-wet phase inversion to form flat sheet membranes, with nano TiO2 concentrations are 0.5%-wt, 1%-wt, and 1.5%-wt, respectively. For modification purpose, the membrane was subjected by irradiated under UV rays for 1, 2, 3 min, immersion in the ethanol-acetone mixture, and then followed by thermal annealing for 20 s at 180 °C. Experimental results show that the nano-hybrid PES-nano TiO2 with 0.5 wt-% nanoparticles loading showed the best pweformance in term gas permeability. Indeed, the combinations of UV rays irradiation, immersion in the ethanol-acetone mixture, and thermal annealing combination treatments exhibited the best performance. In this study, the CO2 permeability and selectivity gas CO2/CH4 for modified membrane are 680.60 GPU and 43.09, respectively. It is expected that this study can guidance for improving new strategies to facilitate nanohybrid PES – nano TiO2 membrane for CO2 removal in CH4.