A review - The development of hollow fibre membranes for gas separation processes

Abstract Gas separation is an important separation process to many industries, and membrane separation using hollow fibre membranes (HFMs) has become one of the emerging technologies. In this article, the gas separation concepts, gas transport mechanism, and the fabrication and gas separation performance of HFMs including asymmetric HFMs, thin film composite hollow fibre membranes (TFC-HFMs), and mixed matrix hollow fibre membranes (MM-HFMs), are reviewed and discussed. Dope composition and spinning parameters directly influence the structure of HFMs and subsequently the gas separation performance of HFMs. The gas separation performance of TFC-HFMs can be improved by the design of the coating solution, surface modification, and the addition of both a gutter layer and a protective layer. Mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) have been intensively investigated in flat sheet membranes and the inspiring gas separation results have been obtained. Therefore, the incorporation of nanoparticles into hollow fibre membranes is a desirable solution to increase the gas permeability and selectivity simultaneously. The functionalization of nanoparticles and fabrication methods of MM-HFMs are also presented.