Quick acting membrane

A new polymer membrane which started life in Korea is claimed to be four times more effective than conventional membranes at separating carbon dioxide from methane.

The membrane works by allowing carbon dioxide or other small molecules to go through hour-glass shaped pores within it, whilst impeding natural gas, or methane, movement through the same pores.

Dr Ho Bum Park, a postdoctoral student in the laboratory of Prof Benny Freeman at the University of Texas at Austin, also found that the polymer membrane acts quickly too. It permits carbon dioxide to move through it a few hundred times faster than conventional membranes do – even as it prohibits natural gas and most other substances from travelling through its pores for separation purposes.

'If this material was used instead of conventional cellulose acetate membranes, processing plants would require 500 times less space to process natural gas for use because of the membranes’ more efficient separation capabilities, and would lose less natural gas in their waste products,’ said Freeman, noting that, pound for pound, natural gas has a worse global warming impact on the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.