Facilitated transport hollow fiber membrane prepared by t-Bu CoSalen for O2/N2 separation

This study looks at air separation through a facilitated transport hollow fiber membrane using a CoSalen and PDMS coated composite membrane. The facilitated transport membranes were prepared using different CoSalen contents in the coating solution. The effects of the physicochemical properties such as composite membrane thickness were studied by SEM; the effect of cobalt content in the coating layer was studied by EDX; the effect of thermal decomposition and weight loss of the composite membranes were studied by TGA; and functional group analysis of the PDMS and CoSalen coated membranes were studied by ATR-FT-IR analysis to determine the performance of the composite membranes. The facilitated transport membrane made with the cobalt complex presented a 7.7 value of ideal gas selectivity for O2/N2; in addition, there was a good separation factor (4.5) for air separation, which showed at low pressure (0.1 bar) in the operating pressure range.