Pure and mixed gas permeation study of silica incorporated polyurethane-urea membrane modified by MOCA chain extender

Polyurethane-urea (PUU) nanocomposite membranes have been prepared using various loadings of silica (SiO2) nanoparticles. A Novel PU was fabricated by a two-step bulk polymerization technique based on polycaprolactone (PCL), hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI), and diamine chain extender, 4,4-methylenebis(2-chloroaniline) (MOCA). The FTIR spectra indicated that the extent of phase separation reduces with increasing SiO2 content. The presence of crystal regions in the soft and hard segments was confirmed by DSC and XRD analyses. The obtained results illustrated a decrement in the gases' permeation in the presence of SiO2 particles. By increasing the filler content up to 15 wt% and pressure of 8 bar, the gas permeation value of the CO2, O-2, and N-2 decreased 36%, 54%, and 59%, respectively. However, the permselectivity of the CO2/N-2 and O-2/N-2 increased considerably, 55% and 13% respectively. On the contrary, by raising the temperature, a dramatic augmentation in the permeability of all gases with a simultaneous reduction in the selectivity values of both gas pairs was revealed. Increasing the pressure led to a decrease in the permeability values of all membranes for O-2 and N-2, whereas the permeability for CO2 increased with the pressure. Nevertheless, the selectivity values for the pair of gases increased (at a pressure of 10 bar, 1.66 and 1.17 times the neat PU for CO2/N-2 and O-2/N-2, respectively). Furthermore, the permeability of the CO2, O-2, and N-2 for the mixed gases was smaller than for pure ones at the same gas upstream pressure. Nonetheless, like the pure gas, the selectivity of both pair gases increased.