Preparation and characterization of thin film composite membrane for the removal of water vapor from the flue gas at bench scale

Abstract Water inadequacy is increasing day by day and researchers are developing several technology to fulfill the pure water demand. Currently membrane technology is coming in big way to save and recovered the water. Herewith we introduce the thin-film composite (TFC) hollow fiber membranes to recover water vapor from flue gas in industrial power plants and it has become a promising technology. TFC membranes were prepared by interfacial polymerization between the aqueous monomer of 3,5-diaminobenzoic acid (DABA) in various concentrations and the organic monomer of trimesoyl chloride (TMC) on inner surface of a polysulfone (PSf) hollow fiber substrate. The selective polyamide layers of TFC membranes were comprehensively characterized by attenuated total reflectance Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and water contact angle measurement (WCA). The effect of aqueous monomer concentration on water vapor permeance and selectivity was investigated at lab-scale. As a result, a maximal selectivity of 313, along with 2873 GPU permeance, was obtained using an aqueous monomer concentration of 0.5 wt%; these synthetic conditions were applied for the preparation of bench-scale TFC membranes module. Subsequently, bench-scale experiments using real flue gas were carried out using different operating variables. Consequently, maximal water flux and water vapor removal efficiency (recovery ratio) of 2.3 kg/m 2 h and 27.7% were obtained. It is possible that the TFC hollow fiber membrane system will be a sustainable approach for water recycling and conservation.