Asif, K. and Lock, S.S.M. and Taqvi, S.A.A. and Jusoh, N. and Yiin, C.L. and Chin, B.L.F. and Loy, A.C.M. (2021) A molecular simulation study of silica/polysulfone mixed matrix membrane for mixed gas separation. Polymers, 13 (13). ISSN 20734360
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Polysulfone-based mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) incorporated with silica nanopar-ticles are a new generation material under ongoing research and development for gas separation. However, the attributes of a better-performing MMM cannot be precisely studied under experimental conditions. Thus, it requires an atomistic scale study to elucidate the separation performance of silica/polysulfone MMMs. As most of the research work and empirical models for gas transport properties have been limited to pure gas, a computational framework for molecular simulation is required to study the mixed gas transport properties in silica/polysulfone MMMs to reflect real membrane separation. In this work, Monte Carlo (MC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were employed to study the solubility and diffusivity of CO2/CH4 with varying gas concentrations (i.e., 30 CO2/CH4, 50 CO2/CH4, and 70 CO2/CH4) and silica content (i.e., 15�30 wt.). The ac-curacy of the simulated structures was validated with published literature, followed by the study of the gas transport properties at 308.15 K and 1 atm. Simulation results concluded an increase in the free volume with an increasing weight percentage of silica. It was also found that pure gas consistently exhibited higher gas transport properties when compared to mixed gas conditions. The results also showed a competitive gas transport performance for mixed gases, which is more appar-ent when CO2 increases. In this context, an increment in the permeation was observed for mixed gas with increasing gas concentrations (i.e., 70 CO2/CH4 > 50 CO2/CH4 > 30 CO2/CH4). The diffu-sivity, solubility, and permeability of the mixed gases were consistently increasing until 25 wt., followed by a decrease for 30 wt. of silica. An empirical model based on a parallel resistance approach was developed by incorporating mathematical formulations for solubility and permeability. The model results were compared with simulation results to quantify the effect of mixed gas transport, which showed an 18 and 15 percentage error for the permeability and solubility, re-spectively, in comparison to the simulation data. This study provides a basis for future understand-ing of MMMs using molecular simulations and modeling techniques for mixed gas conditions that demonstrate real membrane separation. © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | cited By 11 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Carbon dioxide; Dielectric properties; Gases; Molecular dynamics; Molecular structure; Monte Carlo methods; Separation; Silica; Solubility; Transport properties, Computational framework; Experimental conditions; Gas transport properties; Mathematical formulation; Mixed matrix membranes; Molecular dynamics simulations; Research and development; Separation performance, Gas permeable membranes |
Depositing User: | Mr Ahmad Suhairi UTP |
Date Deposited: | 10 Nov 2023 03:29 |
Last Modified: | 10 Nov 2023 03:29 |
URI: | https://khub.utp.edu.my/scholars/id/eprint/14787 |