Nickel(II) ion-intercalated MXene membranes for enhanced H₂/CO₂ separation

Abstract

Hydrogen fuel has been embraced as a potential long-term solution to the growing demand for clean energy. A membrane-assisted separation is promising in producing high-purity H₂. Molecular sieving membranes (MSMs) are endowed with high gas selectivity and permeability because their well-defined micropores can facilitate molecular exclusion, diffusion, and adsorption. In this work, MXene nanosheets intercalated with Ni²⁺ were assembled to form an MSM supported on Al₂O₃ hollow fiber via a vacuum-assisted filtration and drying process. The prepared membranes showed excellent H₂/CO₂ mixture separation performance at room temperature. Separation factor reached 615 with a hydrogen permeance of 8.35 × 10⁻⁸ mol·m⁻²·s⁻¹·Pa⁻¹. Compared with the original Ti₃C₂T_x/Al₂O₃ hollow fiber membranes, the permeation of hydrogen through the Ni²⁺-Ti₃C₂T_x/Al₂O₃ membrane was considerably increased, stemming from the strong interaction between the negatively charged MXene nanosheets and Ni²⁺. The interlayer spacing of MSMs was tuned by Ni²⁺. During 200-hour testing, the resultant membrane maintained an excellent gas separation without any substantial performance decline. Our results indicate that the Ni²⁺ tailored Ti₃C₂T_x/Al₂O₃ hollow fiber membranes can inspire promising industrial applications.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

MXene / H₂/CO₂ separation / nickel ions / hollow fiber

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21776165, 21878179 and 21978157). Naitao Yang gratefully thanks the support via Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2019MB056). Shaomin Liu acknowledges the financial support provided by the Australian Research Council (DP180103861).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-020-1990-1 and is accessible for authorized users.

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