Separation of Propylene/Propane in Facilitated Transport Membrane Containing Silver Nanoparticle

Membrane-based gas separation enables a chemical process to be low-energy consuming and environmentally friendly while C₃ splitter requires high energy consumption in petrochemical processes. This study is aimed to separate propylene and propane using membrane process instead of NCC(Naphtha Cracking Center) C₃ splitter. In this study, high performance facilitated transport membrane (FTM) is introduced for propylene/propane separation. We fabricated FTM composite membrane module using PVP/AgBF₄/TCNQ composite on top of hollow fiber membrane. Pure gases and mixed gas permeation test were performed. We developed simulation program predicting the membrane separation properties under operation conditions. Separation properties of FTM module for propylene and propane were obtained from the simulation program based on the pure gas permeation data. Based on these results, it is predicted that an one-stage membrane process provides 99.5% of propylene at permeate side from a binary gas mixture of 95 vol% C₃H₆ / 5 vol% C₃H₈ supplied as a feed gas.