Interior Modification of NanoPorous Fillers to Fabricate High Performance Mixed Matrix Membranes

A new method is developed to enhance the gas separation properties of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) by interior modification of an inorganic nanoporous particle. Shipinabottle (SIB), as a novel synthesis strategy, is considered to encapsulate a polyaza macrocyclic Agligand complex into the zeolite Y, which is resulted in a new hostguest nanocomposite. It is consequently incorporated into a glassy polymer matrix to fabricate a novel MMM for CO2 separation. Accordingly, cellulose acetate (CA) with relatively low gas permeability is selected as the membrane polymeric matrix to provide an appropriate opportunity for better tracking the effect of incorporating the new synthesized nanoporous hybrids. The results showed a promising increase in both the CO2 permeability (45.71%) and CO2/N2 selectivity (40.28%) of the prepared MMM over its pristine CA membrane. It can be concluded that the proposed method makes it possible to fabricate novel MMMs with significant intensification in performance of the current MMMs.