Determination of the upper limits, benchmarks, and critical properties for gas separations using stabilized room temperature ionic liquid membranes (SILMs) for the purpose of guiding future research

The literature reports that supported ionic liquid membranes (SILMs) outperform standard polymers for the separations of CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4, even under continuous flow mixed gas conditions. Before the expenditure of more resources to develop new room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) and SILMs, it is time to consider what benchmarks for SILM performance exist and if upper limits could be projected based on the physical chemistry of RTILs. At this juncture, we should ask if the current research efforts are properly focused based on the successes and failures in the literature. We summarize literature data, along with adding new data, on the SILM permeabilities and selectivities for the following gas pairs: CO2/N2, CO2/CH4, O2/N2, ethylene/ethane, propylene/propane, 1-butene/butane, and 1,3-butadiene/butane. The analysis predicts a maximum CO2-permeability for SILMs and an upper bound for permeability selectivity vs. CO2-permeability with respect to the CO2/N2 and CO2/CH4 separations. Also summarized are the representative successes and failures for improving the separation performance of SILMs via functionalization and facilitated transport in the context of the CO2/N2, CO2/CH4, and olefin/paraffin separations. In the context of the CO2-separations, the analysis recommends a number of future research foci including research into SILMs cast from RTILs with smaller molar volumes. In the context of olefin/paraffin separations, the preliminary data is encouraging when considering the use of facilitated transport via silver carriers. Since RTIL-solvent/solvent interactions dominate in terminating the overall SILM performance, past attempts at enhancing solute/solvent interactions via the addition of functional groups to the RTILs have not produced SILMs with better separation performance compared to the unfunctionalized RTILs. Future research into functionalized RTILs needs to consider the changes to the dominant solvent/solvent interactions and not just the solute/solvent interactions.