Engineering of Membrane Gas Separation Processes: State of The Art and Prospects

Membrane processes are today one of the key technologies for industrial gas separations and show growing interest for future use in sustainable production systems. Besides materials development, dedicated engineering methods are of major importance for the rigorous and most efficient design of membrane units and systems. Starting from approaches based on simplified hypotheses developed in the 50’s, modelling and simulation tools for membrane gas separations have gradually evolved, up to modern process synthesis softwares and programs. In this paper, an overview of major industrial applications and associated simulation approaches of membrane gas separations is first proposed. In a second step, the current possibilities and limitations of Process Systems Engineering (PSE) softwares is detailed. The necessity to take into account specificities such as variable permeability, pressure drop effects and/or non-isothermal conditions is discussed. Perspectives offered by recent process synthesis methods are finally analysed, with an emphasis on challenges such as multicomponent, multi-membrane, multi-operation processes (such as hybrid processes). The role of membrane gas separation engineering methods and new opportunities for future applications are discussed.