Adsorption and Diffusion of Methane and Carbon Dioxide in Amorphous Regions of Cross-Linked Polyethylene: A Molecular Simulation Study
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Computational Transport Phenomena LabEarth Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
KAUST Grant Number
2993Date
2019-04-16Online Publication Date
2019-04-16Print Publication Date
2019-05-15Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/652902
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Show full item recordAbstract
We perform Monte Carlo (MC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the adsorption and diffusion properties of methane and CO2 in cross-linked polyethylene in the temperature range 300–600 K. A hybrid MC/MD approach was used to incorporate the effects of framework flexibility and polymer swelling on the gas adsorption. The polymers show negligible swelling at the studied conditions. A nonmonotonic behavior of gas adsorption as a function of the cross-linking degree was obtained. Notably, a similar behavior was observed for the void fraction and pore diameters. This shows a direct correlation between gas adsorption and the pore characteristics of the cross-linked polymer network. Mobility of methane and carbon dioxide in the polymer matrix increases with temperature. Also, gas mobility decreases with increasing cross-linking degree, consistent with experiments. These results can be explained by the fact that the waiting time for a gas molecule in a cavity before the jump increases with decreasing temperature and increasing cross-linking degree. Interestingly, the activation energy for gas diffusion generally decreases with increasing cross-linking. This is possibly due to the fact that increasing the cross-linking degree leads to smaller pore sizes especially at high temperatures. Such a molecular-level understanding of adsorption and diffusion of gases in cross-linked polyethylene is important in improving the performance of polymer networks for potential applications in gas separation, barrier technology, and food packaging.Citation
Yang Y, Narayanan Nair AK, Sun S (2019) Adsorption and Diffusion of Methane and Carbon Dioxide in Amorphous Regions of Cross-Linked Polyethylene: A Molecular Simulation Study. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 58: 8426–8436. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.9b00690.Sponsors
This publication is partly based upon work supported by the KAUST Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Award 2993. Support by the The Dow Chemical Company is gratefully acknowledged. Yabin Sun, Jozef Van Dun, and Jerker Kjellqvist at Dow are acknowledged for helpful discussions. Y.Y. and A.K.N.N. thank the computational support from KAUST.Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Additional Links
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.iecr.9b00690ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/acs.iecr.9b00690