Membrane-based gas separation of ethylene/ethylene oxide mixtures for product enrichment in microreactor technology.

For the off-gas product separation in an ethylene oxide microreactor, new concepts need to be developed. Instead of using the technical process of low-temperature distillation, the performance of gas separation through a dense polymeric membrane was investigated. Different noncrosslinked and crosslinked 6FDA-based polyimides and copolyimides (6FDA=4,4'-hexafluoroisopropylidene diphthalic anhydride) were screened as potential membrane materials. The polymer structure of the membrane material was found to influence the solubility of ethylene oxide and ethylene. The introduction of polar substituents in the polymer backbone increases the solubility selectivity drastically. For permeation experiments in the same pressure range, a novel setup was developed using microstructured membrane supports. With this device, different polymer membranes were tested with respect to the pure gas permeability of ethylene oxide and ethylene as a function of the feed pressure, so that plasticisation effects could be discussed. For different polyimides and copolyimides, ideal ethylene oxide/ethylene selectivities between 3 and 4.5 were found combined with permeabilities between 1.8 and 80.8 barrer.