Amino-decorated organosilica membranes for highly permeable CO2 capture.

Membrane-based separation technologies are considered an effective process for the capture of CO 2 due to advantages such as high levels of energy efficiency with inexpensive levels of investment. It remains challenging, however, to develop a membrane with high levels of both permeance and selectivity with the ability to capture CO 2 in a highly efficient manner. Herein, we report amino-decorated organosilica membranes that are based on a facile and effective co-polymerization strategy that uses bis(triethoxysilyl)acetylene (BTESA) and (3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) precursors. This co-polymerization strategy simultaneously endows the resultant membranes with a controlled pore size and enhanced CO 2 -philic properties that have significantly improved CO 2 separation performance. These composite membranes display CO 2 permeance that ranges from 2550–3230 GPU and a range for CO 2 /N 2 selectivity of 31–42 in the separation of CO 2 /N 2 mixtures, which outperforms most state-of-the-art membranes and exceeds the target for post-combustion CO 2 capture operations. A satisfying performance was achieved with a CO 2 permeance of 8 ✕ 10−7 mol m−2 s−1 Pa−1 (2390 GPU) and CO 2 /CH 4 selectivity of 70. The present study highlights an elegant decoration strategy for the production of membranes with ultrahigh CO 2 capture capacities, which can also be extended to other organosilica precursors for target-oriented separations by varying the bridged or side-chain groups. Image 1 • Amino-decorated organosilica membrane was prepared via co-polymerization strategy. • BTESA-A membranes obtained controlled pore size and enhanced CO 2 affinity. • BTESA-A membranes featured promisingly high CO 2 capture performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]