Аннотация:Because of a wide use of membrane gas separation it is important to have a simple and
versatile method for the direct determination of the gas and vapour solubility coefficients S.
Some of existing methods for determination of Srequire expensive and complex equipment.
In this work we present a new technique for determination the solubility coefficients, method
of isothermal desorption with chromatographic detection.
This method is carried out in several stages. At the first stage the "empty" volume V
∑,G
of the sorption chamber is determined Then a membrane material with the known mass m
pol
is placed in the loop and saturated by the tested gas with a known partial pressure p
1
at given
temperature T. After this, the dissolved gas under investigation is desorbed by gas-carrier
(He) into the chromatographic detector for determining the total amount of gas contained in
the sorption volume (loop), including the amount of gas sorbed in the polymer: n
1
∑
= n
1
G
+
n
1
pol
, where
is
the amount of gas in the gas phase of the sorption volume. The sorbed
gas amount is estimated at the last stage bearing in mind that gas phase volume is a
difference between "empty" volume V
∑,G
of sorption chamber and volume V
pol
of
membrane material introduced and taking into account the equation of state of the gas. Thus,
an amount of the gas in the polymer at given partial pressure and temperature can be found.
According to this procedure, it is possible to draw the gas sorption isotherm and calculate the
gas solubility coefficient in the membrane material.
For the verification of the proposed methodology sorption isotherms of various gases at
pressure up to 2.5 atm were obtained for polyvinyltrimethylsilane, the polymer with
well-known sorption parameters. A good agreement was achieved between the measured and
published solubility coefficients in this polymer. Then this technique was applied to novel
polymers: poly(3,4-bis(trimethylsilyl)tricyclononen-7), OH-containing polyimide and
polyhexafluoropropylene. The sorption isotherms of N
2
, O
2
, CO
2
, CH
4
, C
2
H
6
, C
3
H
8
at 25
± 2 ºC in these polymers were obtained. In the studied range of pressures they are linear. The
found solubility coefficients S are in agreement with the ratios P/D, where P and D are
permeability and diffusion coefficients, respectively. The results of the comparisons and
peculiarities of performing of the proposed technique will be discussed in the presentation.
It should be noted again that significant advantages of the method proposed are the
simplicity of setup, speed of analysis, the possibility of constructing sorption isotherms at
low partial pressures of the gas and possibility to investigate membrane material in different
forms (films, fibers, flakes and grains).