For the first time, researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Delaware, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Tohoku University in Japan, have demonstrated a high flux, high selectivity molecular sieving separation using a zeolite membrane [Sciencexpress (6 March 2003), 1082169]. This type of separation relies on very small differences, on the angstrom or subangstrom scale, in size and/or shape.
Zeolite membranes are commercially available for water-alcohol and similar separations, but rely upon adsorption selectivity and can, therefore, operate in the presence of defects (pores, pinholes, cracks) larger than the zeolite pores. Instead, to make full use of the crystallinity of zeolites, which have periodic arrangements of cages and channels, fabricated films must be as uniform and close to ideal as possible. Thickness, grain size, and orientation must be controlled, grain boundary effects (channel blockages or intercrystalline paths larger than the zeolite pores) on permeation properties minimized, and stress-induced crack formation avoided all together.
Michael Tsapatsis and his colleagues used a seeded growth method to fabricate thin, oriented zeolite films of siliceous ZSM-5, which are suitable for many industrially important organic molecules. The oriented seed layer creates a well-intergrown film avoiding twin overgrowths and random nucleation, which can lead to loss of preferred orientation, by using organic polycations as a structure-directing agent. The zeolite films are 1 μm thick, with single grains of 1 μm dimension in the in-plane direction and 5.5 Å channels running straight across the membrane. These membranes show a better performance for the crucial xylene isomer separation, which is used as a benchmark. The researchers are continuing with their fundamental studies of crystal growth and will attempt to scale-up the new membranes for a membrane reactor demonstration, Tsapatsis told Materials Today.