Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation for Carbon Dioxide Permeated Across Primitive-structured Thermally-rearranged Membrane

The separation of CO2 and the purification of natural gas are critical in natural gas refining applications. The use of a thermally rearranged polyamide membrane to improve CO2/N2 separation efficiency is a viable option. The separation of CO2/N2 binary gas mixtures was studied by conducting computational fluid dynamics simulation on a Triply Periodic Minimal Surface structured membrane module. The relationship of pressure, CO2 feed concentration and membrane thickness to the separation performance of membrane were analysed. The simulation results show a CO2 recovery percentage of 76.38% at the feed pressure of 0.1 MPa. For the concentration of CO2 in feed gas, feed gas with 30% of CO2 volume fraction shows the highest CO2 recovery percentage of 90.26%. For membrane thickness, 3 mm thickness of membrane demonstrates a CO2 recovery percentage of 70.5%. The overall separation efficiency for the membrane is improved at lower CO2 feed concentration attributed to the higher amount of the adsorption sites available on the membrane surface. This thermally rearranged polyamide membrane demonstrates high potential in industrial applications as it has great mechanical strength which able to withstand higher stress and strain, and demonstrating it ability in achieving CO2 recovery during the simulation study.