Carrier gas flow arrangement based photoacoustic detection method for measuring gas permeability of polymer membranes

This paper describes a membrane permeability measuring set-up based on photoacoustic spectroscopy using continuous carrier gas flow to transport the permeated analyte molecules into a photoacoustic detection cell. The permeability parameters of the sample were determined from the measured permeation curves by using a numerical curve fitting algorithm. The method was applied to different membrane samples for determining methane and carbon-dioxide permeability at various carrier gas flow rates (CFRs). For each sample, a characteristic threshold flow rate (TFR) value can be identified below which a strong dependency of the determined permeation parameters on the CFR was found. For those cases when the CFR value cannot be set to be sufficiently high (i.e. above the TFR value), an extrapolation method was presented giving an accurate estimation of the permeation parameters.