Affiliations 

  • 1 CO2 Research Center (CO2RES), Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar 32610, Perak, Malaysia
  • 2 School of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Nibong Tebal 14300, Penang, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Faisalabad, Engineering Wing, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan
Membranes (Basel), 2021 Aug 26;11(9).
PMID: 34564471 DOI: 10.3390/membranes11090654

Abstract

A spiral wound membrane (SWM) is employed to separate acid gases (mainly CO2) from natural gas due to its robustness, lower manufacturing cost, and moderate packing density compared to hollow fiber membranes. Various mathematical models are available to describe the separation performance of SWMs under different operating conditions. Nevertheless, most of the mathematical models deal with only binary gas mixtures (CO2 and CH4) that may lead to an inaccurate assessment of separation performance of multicomponent natural gas mixtures. This work is aimed to develop an SWM separation model for multicomponent natural gas mixtures. The succession stage method is employed to discretize the separation process within the multicomponent SWM module for evaluating the product purity, hydrocarbon loss, stage cut, and permeate acid gas composition. Our results suggest that multicomponent systems tend to generate higher product purity, lower hydrocarbon loss, and augmented permeate acid gas composition compared to the binary system. Furthermore, different multicomponent systems yield varied separation performances depending on the component of the acid gas. The developed multicomponent SWM separation model has the potential to design and optimize the spiral wound membrane system for industrial application.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.