Ahmad Fausi Ismail, Suhaina Mohd Ibrahim and Nor Shawal Bin Nasri

pp. 833 - 842

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of dope extrusion rates on morphology
and gas separation performance of asymmetric polysulfone hollow fiber membranes. Asymmetric polysulfone hollow fiber membranes for gas separation were prepared from a solution consisting of 26.0 wt. %
of polysulfone, 30.4 wt. % of N, N-dimethylacetamide, 30.4 wt. % of tetrahydrofuran and 13.2 wt. % ethanol.
The dry/wet phase separation process was applied to a dry/wet spinning process. Fibers were spun at various
dope extrusion rates (DER) ranging from 1.5 - 3.0 cm³
/min and hence at different levels of shear. The results
suggest that as the dope extrusion rate is increased, the selectivity will increase until a critical level of shear
is reached, beyond which the membrane performance deteriorates. Pressure-normalized-fluxes and selectivities were evaluated by using pure oxygen and nitrogen as test gases.

Keywords

• gas separation
• polysulfone
• shear rates
• hollow fiber membranes