Effects of temperature and relative humidity on the methane permeability rate of biogas storage membranes

ABSTRACT

Selecting a material for biogas storage membranes is becoming increasingly vital because of the wide applications of biogas storage membranes in biogas plants. Material selection has numerous influencing factors, including gas permeability, strength, density, and so on. Among these, gas permeability has a vital role in biogas storage membranes. In this study, three kinds of biogas storage membranes with the same thickness were selected to investigate the effects of temperature (10, 20, 30, and 40°C) and relative humidity (RH; 0%, 50%, and 100%) on the permeability rate of biogas storage membranes. Results demonstrated that when various membrane samples with the same RH values were tested, temperature exhibited a strong effect on permeability rate. Kinetic analysis showed that the relationship between permeability and temperature agrees with the Arrhenius equation. However, no remarkable variation in methane permeability was observed for membranes with the same temperature but different RH values, thus suggesting that RH nearly has no obvious direct influence on the permeability rate of membranes.

KEYWORDS:

• Kinetic
• methane permeability rate
• relative humidity
• storage membrane
• temperature

Acknowledgments

Authors thank the support of China Key Projects in the National Science & Technology Pillar Program (Project no. 2008BADC4B10) and International cooperation project of Ministry of Science and Technology China (Project no. 2013DFG92620).