Preparation and Characterization of Supported Ordered Nanoporous Carbon Membranes for Gas Separation

Supported ordered nanoporous carbon membranes (ONCM) were prepared by coating a membrane-forming solution of resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) resin on plate support through solvent evaporation and pyrolysis. The membrane solution was formed by the organic-organic assembly of RF resin with Pluronic F127 in the presence of triethyl orthoacetate and catalyst hydrochloric acid. The thermal stability of precursor, the microstructure, functional groups, and morphology and porous structure of resultant support and ONCM were investigated by the techniques of thermogravimetry, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy/transmission electron microscopy and nitrogen adsorption-desorption, respectively. Results have shown that the as-obtained ONCM has well-developed porous regularity with bi-modal narrow pore size distribution. ONCM is tightly adhered to the adopted phenolic resin-based carbon support. Gases permeating through the ONCM are dominated by molecular sieving mechanism. The ideal gas separation factor of the supported ONCM can be reached to 46.4, 4.7 and 3.3 for H-2/N-2, CO2/N-2 and O-2/N-2, respectively. The supported ONCM obtained in this work exhibits most promising application for permanent gas separation. (c) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 39925.