relation: https://khub.utp.edu.my/scholars/8331/ title: Process Modelling and Optimization of Thickness Dependent Physical Aging in Polymeric Membranes creator: Lock, S.S.M. creator: Lau, K.K. creator: Shariff, A.M. creator: Yeong, Y.F. description: Polymeric membranes are at non-equilibrium nature and inherently undergo a spontaneous evolution towards equilibrium known as physical aging. It is required to incorporate physical aging phenomena in membrane permeation mechanism to quantify such effect to the separative performance under varying membrane thicknesses. In this work, the volume relaxation process over the course of aging has been modeled employing the dual mode mechanism, which is comprised of lattice contraction and diffusion of free volume. Later, the dual mode model has been integrated within a succession of states methodology that analytically addresses the separation mechanism in a cocurrent membrane based on the solution-diffusion theory. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first pioneering attempt that incorporates the effect of aging on separation performance of membrane. In this study, when membrane thickness is increased from 100 to 400 nm, the initial membrane requirement is also increased by 3.85 times. Nonetheless, the recovery performance after 1 year of aging also reduces from 21.35 to 12.39. It is found that although the thinner polymeric membrane inherits higher permeance characteristic, making it a highly sought after structure as compared to its bulk counterpart by exhibiting higher driving force and hence smaller area requirement, the thinner membrane also demonstrates drawback of accelerated physical aging, which contributes to higher reduction in product recovery. The optimum membrane thickness has been determined to be 174 nm in present work. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. publisher: Elsevier B.V. date: 2017 type: Article type: PeerReviewed identifier: Lock, S.S.M. and Lau, K.K. and Shariff, A.M. and Yeong, Y.F. (2017) Process Modelling and Optimization of Thickness Dependent Physical Aging in Polymeric Membranes. Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, 40. pp. 367-372. ISSN 15707946 relation: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85041403298&doi=10.1016%2fB978-0-444-63965-3.50063-5&partnerID=40&md5=b24a25e57c958f43132176193cedd7c9 relation: 10.1016/B978-0-444-63965-3.50063-5 identifier: 10.1016/B978-0-444-63965-3.50063-5