What’s New in Gas Separation Membrane Developments?
Gas separation membranes provide an energy-efficient alternative to conventional techniques like distillation and cryogenic separation, as they don't require phase changes or extensive heating and cooling. This translates to lower operational costs and reduced environmental impact.
Economically, membrane systems often require lower capital investment and maintenance costs due to their simple design with no moving parts. They can operate continuously with minimal operator intervention, further reducing operational expenses.
And, according to the Jan. 3 Gas Separation Membrane Global Market Opportunities and Strategies to 2033 report from ResearchAndMarkets.com, the future looks bright for the technologies.
The Dublin-based company estimates market value in 2023 as approximately $2.07 billion following five years of robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR). This is expected to increase to $3.04 billion by 2028 and $4.58 billion by 2033.
According to the report, this growth has been propelled by the robust expansion of the oil and gas industry, rising demand for renewable energy sources and growth in the pharmaceutical sector.
Industrial Appeal
This industrial appeal is segmented into various categories, including product type, application, end-user industry and module type.
Polyimide (PI) and polyaramide (PA) membranes dominate product type segments, and nitrogen generation and oxygen enrichment lead within applications.
PI membranes bring several advantages in gas separation, including very good thermal and chemical stability and high separation performance. PA membranes are favored for strength and stability.
The report, which covers 33 manufacturers, notes that the market is dominated by the hollow fiber module segment and urges the redoubling of efforts to improve innovation and efficiency.
Environmental Focus
One of the companies mentioned in the report, Evonik Industries, Marl, Germany, will focus its efforts on biogas producers in early 2025.
The company claims its new SEPURAN Green G5X 11 biogas membrane is the largest of its kind on the market. It is specifically designed to upgrade biogas to renewable natural gas (RNG) in various situations.
It doubles the capacity of the company’s existing biogas membrane and uses a proprietary three-stage configuration to maximize methane recovery rates and onstream time. It is also designed to be compact, require fewer piper connections, and be easy to operate.
“The launch of this product addresses the growing demand for our membranes among large-volume biogas upgrading projects in landfills and other large RNG projects,” noted Jennifer Doerper, the company’s global director of biogas membranes.
Evonik launched its first membrane product, SEPURAN Green, also for efficient upgrading of biogas, in 2011. Membrane products for nitrogen, helium, hydrogen, natural gas and others followed, all using the company’s hollow-fiber technology (Figure 1).
Boosting the availability of SEPURAN membrane technology, the company is also due to complete the construction of two new hollow fiber spinning production lines at its facilities in Schörfling and Lenzing in Austria this year.
The investments include expanding membrane module manufacturing capabilities at Schörfling, while doing similar at Lenzing for the high-performance plastics the modules require.
"We are going full throttle for the green transformation and are investing a mid-double-digit million Euro amount as the next step to grow our membranes business," said CEO Christian Kullmann when the investments were announced.
In Newark, California, Membrane Technology and Research (MTR) Carbon Capture is currently working to complete a carbon capture plant at its Wyoming Integrated Test Center (ITC) in Gillette, Wyoming.
When commissioned, the plant will capture up to 150 t/d of CO2 from Basin Electric’s Dry Fork Station (DFS) coal-fired power plant, producing over 99.9% pure liquid CO2 with a 90% capture rate.
In addition to the 150 t/d per day plant, MTR also has been awarded a full-scale FEED project for a 3 million t/yr capture plant at DFS by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.
Both will use the company’s polymeric Polaris membranes and be the largest application of the technology so far. The projects follow 15 years of development and a series of pilot and demonstration carbon capture plants.
The MTR Carbon Capture system at the Wyoming ITC is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s large-scale pilot carbon capture program and is funded through grant DE-FE0031587. This program supports the development of key technologies that will significantly improve the economics and environmental performance of point-source carbon capture. MTR so far has been the recipient of over 20 awards from the DOE in support of the development and scale-up of the Polaris membrane capture technology.
Clean Hydrogen
Meanwhile, Linde, Woking, UK, has a long-term agreement to supply clean hydrogen to Dow’s Fort Saskatchewan Path2Zero project. The company will invest more than $2 billion to build, own and operate a world-scale integrated clean hydrogen and atmospheric gases facility in Alberta, Canada.
The other project components include a hydrogen-fuelled ethylene cracker, expanded polyethylene production, power and steam cogeneration, off-site carbon sequestration, plus utilities and offices.
It should decarbonize approximately 20% of Dow’s global ethylene capacity while growing polyethylene supply by about 15%, triple Dow’s ethylene and polyethylene capacity from the site, while retrofitting the site’s existing assets to net-zero carbon emissions. It will add approximately 1.8 million mt/yr of ethylene capacity in a phased manner through 2030.
Eventually the project will produce and supply approximately 3.2 million mt/yr of certified low- to zero-carbon emissions polyethylene and ethylene derivatives for customers and joint venture partners around the globe.
Linde’s complex will combine autothermal reforming with its proprietary HISORP carbon capture (CC) technology, to produce clean hydrogen and will also use membrane technology to recover hydrogen contained in off-gases from Dow’s ethylene cracker.
In the first phase, Linde will supply the clean hydrogen, nitrogen and other services to support Dow’s net-zero emissions integrated ethylene cracker and derivatives site. Linde’s new facility will also supply clean hydrogen to existing and new industrial customers seeking to decarbonize their operations, according to the company.
In total, Linde’s complex will capture CO2 emissions for sequestration in excess of 2 million mt/yr.
Durability & High Separation
In Japan, Toray Industries, Tokyo, is installing a pilot plant for its proprietary all-carbon CO2 separation membrane at the company’s Shiga production facility.
Due to start operations April 1, the new plant will work with biogas and natural gas production companies to develop mass production techniques for the membranes. The first of these are expected to be available in 2026.
After research studies confirmed the high separation and durability of the membranes, Toray said it refined its hollow fiber spinning and thin-layer coating technologies, establishing a film production process capable of producing consistently stable membranes. At the same time, it developed technology for manufacturing membrane elements that bundle CO2 separation membranes.
These were subsequently demonstrated at the company’s Tokai plant, where a week-long demonstration successfully removed CO2 from biogas and exhaust gas emissions.
The company says its membrane's high performance is due to a dual-layer structure, comprising a thin carbon film separation layer on the surface of a hollow-fiber porous carbon-fiber support. Making the support as thin as possible reduces the membrane module’s weight and size, which the company says is also ideal for applications in CCS and CCU where CO2 separation is essential.
Not All Good News
Even so, it’s not all good news in the competitive world of membrane gas separation technologies.
Fujifilm announced in November 2024 that it will stop developing, manufacturing and selling gas separation and ion exchange membranes at its facility in Tilburg, The Netherlands, resulting in the loss of 80 jobs.
Executive Vice President Peter Struik said, “The decision was taken after a period of intensive work on membrane development and production. This ultimately did not result in significant market share, leaving profitability significantly behind.”
The Tilburg facility was boosted in 2022 by the announcement that Fujifilm would invest in a scale-up of its multi-layer coating technology there to develop and produce novel membranes to filter specific gas molecules and ions.
Its gas separation membranes are based on semi-permeable, spiral-wound elements with partial pressure differences used as the driving force. The company said this enabled both high permeation and permeation differences between gasses, resulting in high flux and high selectivity.
Acting as a toll manufacturer, the company had expected its advanced roll-to-roll coating lines to attract other companies keen to scale up their own membrane production.
The decision to exit is in line with Fujifilm's strategy to strengthen its business portfolio in healthcare and semi-conductor materials, in particular, and focus on profitability and return on investment.
Further Advances
As the ResearchAndMarkets.com reports suggests, innovation is key.
Chemicals and energy specialist SK Innovation, Seoul, and its subsidiary SK IE Technology (SKIET) have developed novel membrane technology that significantly reduces costs and substantially enhances CO2 capture.
Working with a team from the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Yonsei University, also in Seoul, they have developed technology that exclusively uses organic materials in membrane manufacturing.
While organic-inorganic hybrid membranes such as mixed-matric membranes show excellent gas separation performance, their commercial application remains challenging due to difficulties in uniformly dispersing inorganic fillers and achieving good interfacial contact over large areas.
Instead, the team has developed 200 nm thick, high-performance, thin-film composite (TFC) membranes made from low-cost, all-organic materials using what they describe as a commercially attractive and straightforward process for CO2 capture.
Key to the membrane’s performance is a specially developed organic additive 2,4,6-triaminopyrimidine (TAP). This controls the free volume and reduces gas diffusivity in the membrane, enhancing CO2 selectivity over larger gas molecules such as nitrogen and methane.
For example, 2wt% TAP presence reduced nitrogen and methane permeances while achieving a CO2 permeance of 1140 gas permeation units (GPU) and high selectivity for the gas.
In fact, the development team states that this performance significantly surpassed that of conventional Pebax-based membranes and successfully met the target criteria for post-combustion CO2 capture.
Based on these research findings, SK Innovation plans to accelerate the development of carbon capture membrane technology in collaboration with SKIET, which boasts both global competitiveness and mass production capabilities in the field of lithium-ion battery separators (LiBS). These organic-based carbon capture membranes are expected to be deployed in high-carbon-emission industries such as power generation, steel and cement.
Machine Learning & AI
On a broader innovation note, machine learning (ML) promises to be a key tool in future developments.
A paper published in Applied Energy March 2025 carries out what the authors describe as the first systematic literature review on ML in membrane-based gas separation.
The bottom line is that ML accelerates the discovery of high-performance membranes for gas separation.
Carried out by chemical engineering departments in Iran and Quatar, the review covered over 13,000 studies, selecting 68 for final inclusion in its assessment.
“The increasing role of ML and AI in membrane-based gas separation technologies has led to transformative advancements in this field. This systematic review has demonstrated that, compared to the traditional experimental approaches, ML models not only reduce the time and costs associated with membrane development but also enable the analysis of vast datasets, often impractical for experimental handling,” the authors concluded.
However, several challenges remain, including the limited availability of high-quality datasets for newer materials, which can constrain the development of more accurate models. Additionally, the complexity of the models and their interpretability are ongoing concerns, necessitating further improvements in how data is processed and integrated into these systems.
Nonetheless, the authors note that by leveraging ML, researchers can accelerate the discovery of high-performance polymeric membranes, reducing the reliance on traditional experimental approaches and opening up new possibilities for innovation in the field. ⊕
