Experimental Determination of the Gas Transport Characteristics of Polysuflone and Polyphenyleneoxide Hollow-Fiber Membranes in Relation to Noble Gases

This paper presents an an experimental study of commercially available hollow fiber membranes made of two polymers, polysulfone and polyphenylene oxide. The main objective is to determine the gas transport characteristics of these membranes with respect to air components and noble gases. Therefore, the permeabilities of the membranes for nitrogen, oxygen, helium, argon, xenon and krypton were determined as part of this study. Particular attention is paid to the xenon-containing air mixture, since the problem of capturing medical xenon seems to be an urgent chemical and technological problem due to the high cost of the process of obtaining this gas. In the course of the study, the values of the permeability of two membranes for pure gases were determined and the values of ideal selectivity were calculated. Thus, the membrane permeability values for argon, krypton, and xenon were 20.8, 8.4, and 6.8 GPU for the polysulfone membrane and 19.5, 6.2, and 4.8 GPU for the polyphenylene oxide membrane. It was found that the xenon permeability of these membranes decreases in the case of separation of a gas mixture consisting of oxygen nitrogen and xenon and is 5.9 and 4.1 GPU for polysulfone and polyphenylene oxide, respectively. The dependence of the performance of membrane modules based on polysulfone and polyphenylene oxide on the total area of the membrane has also been established.