Microfluidic devices as gas - Ionic liquid membrane contactors for CO2 removal from anaesthesia gases

The CO2 and Xe permeability and CO2/Xe selectivity were determined in the microfluidic devices developed and compared to those exhibited by free standing PDMS membranes mounted on a standard permeation cell. The performance of the microfluidic devices as gas - ionic liquid contactors was evaluated for a given solvent flow rate with pure gas streams of CO2 and Xe. The obtained results show that cholinium propionate with or without the enzyme has no effect on the Xe transport, but remarkably enhances the affinity towards carbon dioxide leading to enhancement factor up to 1.9 in the presence of 0.1 mg CA/gIL.