title: Gas diffusion in polycrystalline silicalite membranes investigated by 1H pulse field-gradient NMR.
abstract: 1H pulse field-gradient (PFG) spin-echo NMR was performed to measure the diffusivity of methane in a polycrystalline MFI-type silicalite membrane. Measured diffusivities decreased with an increase in the diffusion distance and converged to the constant value. This result suggests the presence of a transport barrier in the membrane. The long-time diffusivity in the membrane was 3.7 x 10(-9) m2/s, which was a factor of 3 smaller than reported values in a single crystal. The distance between the transport barriers was estimated to be much larger than 6 mum from the relationship of diffusivity with displacement. It should be noted that the estimated distances were larger than the smallest dimension of the crystals appearing in the membrane surface. Gas permeation and pervaporation tests were carried out on the same sample for which NMR measurements were taken. The estimated methane flux using measured long-time diffusivity by the permeation theory overestimated the experimental value, although it is closer to the experimental value than the value estimated using the short-time diffusivity. These results mean that the methane diffusivity in a silicalite membrane is much smaller than that in a single crystal.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical System Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8685, Japan. takaba@chemsys.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
authors.forename: Hiromitsu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Takaba
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yamamoto
authors.forename: Kikuko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hayamizu
authors.forename: Shin-ichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nakao