Carbon molecular sieve hollow fiber membranes derived from dip-coated precursor hollow fibers comprising nanoparticles

We report a novel approach to economically fabricate dual-layer composite nanoparticle-containing carbon molecular sieve (CMS) hollow fiber membranes having excellent gas separation performance. The economically favored process comprises dip coating engineered support layer fibers to form a dense skin layer in a CMSCMS precursor. The coated fibers are then pyrolyzed to form a high-performance CMS hollow fiber membrane. The nano-particle containing composite carbon molecular sieve hollow fiber membranes showed very attractive selectivities and productivities. This work shows how to produce high performance CMS hollow fiber membrane by coating, which exceeds that achieved with the standard sol-gel support stabilization technique. [Display omitted] •Dual-layer nanoparticle containing precursor fiber membranes were developed.•Precursor membranes dip-coated with two polyimide polymers were employed to fabricate carbon molecule sieve (CMS) membranes.•CMS membranes generated from coating at low relative humidity (RH) have very attractive CO2/CH4 separation performance.•No sol-gel support stabilization was required for the pyrolysis.