Global warming and climate change are closely linked to industrial production and fossil fuel consumption, both of which are major contributors to CO₂ emissions. Despite global efforts to promote industrial sustainability, significant CO₂ emissions are expected to persist in the near future. To address this challenge, strategies such as CO₂ capture, storage, and utilization have been widely explored. Among them, CO₂ capture is the critical first step. Membrane technologies—particularly polymeric membranes—are gaining increasing attention for their efficiency and selectivity, offering a competitive edge over conventional CO₂ capture methods. However, scaling these technologies to handle high industrial flow rates remains a major challenge, largely due to the low technology readiness level of current systems [1].
This study developed and evaluated a novel CO₂ capture system using various polymeric hollow fiber membranes (Airrane Co. Ltd., PermSelect®, and UBE Corporation Europe), tested with real industrial gas streams from the textile (CO₂ concentrations ranging from 0.5% to 7%). The system enabled precise control and optimization of parameters such as CO₂ concentration, pressure, and feed flow rate.
Experiments with textile industry gases containing 0.5% CO₂ showed lower permeate fluxes and minimal influence of pressure on separation efficiency. However, when sampling from the textile industry boiler—where CO₂ concentrations reached around 7%—and using the UBE membrane, promising results were obtained. The UBE membrane exhibited excellent CO₂ permeance (100 GPU), along with high selectivity: 33 for CO₂/N₂ and 6 for CO₂/O₂.
In conclusion, this study demonstrated the feasibility of CO₂ capture using commercial polymeric hollow fiber membranes under real industrial conditions. The results highlight the impact of gas impurities on separation performance and underline the need for advanced materials and optimized system configurations to improve CO₂ purity and overall process efficiency. These findings provide a foundation for future research focused on scaling up CO₂ capture systems for industrial applications.
