Modeling support resistance in zeolite membranes

Zeolite membranes are normally grown on an inert support. In most explorato ry studies on these membranes, it is hard to achieve ideal experimental con ditions in which membrane support resistance and sorbate concentration on t he permeate side are negligible. A simple pseudo-binary diffusion model is proposed for the gaseous transport in the support, while the generalized Ma xwell-Stefan formulation is used to describe the zeolitic diffusion in the membrane. Based on these models, a simple graphical procedure is presented for analyzing the measured unary permeation flux data to obtain zeolitic di ffusivity. Validation of the proposed procedure is demonstrated successfull y on published experimental data. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.