Greenhouse Gases Technologies (Capture and Economic Modelling)

Unprocessed natural gas contains up to 20% of CO₂ with undesirable effects on the performance and transportation of natural gas. Developing new technologies for the removal of carbon dioxide is a critical issue in the natural gas industry. As the state-of-the-art technology, gas separation membrane technology offers extremely attractive advantages over conventional CO₂ removal technologies. The major aim of this project is to develop the hollow fiber membranes with a defect-free thin skin layer that maximizes their permeance and selectivity, thereby maximizing the productivity and efficiency of the natural gas purification process. Polyethersulfone and Matrimid 5218 was chosen in this project as benchmarks for hollow fibre performance. Polyimides are by far the most popular polymer candidate for this application due to its high glass transition temperature and good performance in permeance and selectivity but suffer from plasticization which reduces selectivity as carbon dioxide concentrations increase. Membrane aging with exposure to heavy hydrocarbon contaminants can also compromise the separation performance over time. In this project, optimisation of fibre spinning and post-fabrication treatment is focused on reducing these effects by stabilizing the polymer structure. This project is funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies.

High selectivity Matramid fibres fabricated by optimising spinning parameters.

Economic modeling of carbon capture technologies continues to be an important collaboration with Guy Allinson from the School of Petroleum Engineering as part of a major CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) project. Recent work was presented at the 9th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT-9), 16-20 November.

Ho, M, Allinson, G and Wiley, D, 2008. Factors affecting the cost of capture for Australian lignite coal-fired power plants. In: Proceedings of GHGT-9 - the 9th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies, Washington DC, USA, 16-20 November. Elsevier, Science Direct and Energy Procedia, published online at http://mit.edu/ghgt9/papers/index.html.