A superb water permeable membrane for potential applications in CO2 to liquid fuel process

Abstract In this paper, a superb water permeable membrane is prepared by treating an alumina hollow fiber supported metal-organic framework (MOF) membrane with a hydrophilic ionic liquid (IL). For ternary mixture of H2O/CO2/H2 separation, the IL layer separates H2O and CO2 from H2 and the MOF layer functions as a selective layer for further separation of H2O/CO2. Furthermore, owing to the high hydrophilicity of the IL, water permeation is enhanced comparing to the pristine MOF membrane. At extremely harsh conditions with the temperature high up to 200 °C and the pressure high up to 20 bar, this IL/MOF membrane has achieved excellent water vapor/gases separation performance, with a high water permeance of 7.7*10−8 mol m−2 s−1 Pa−1 and high separation factor for water vapor/gases (~472 for H2O/H2 and ~280 for H2O/CO2).