Polymeric ionic liquids (PILs) are gaining increasing attention as potential membrane materials to be employed for CO2 separation. With a goal to improve gas permeability, this work presents a series of film forming PlLs obtained by controlled degree of N-quaternization (DQ) of PBI-BuI using a bulky 4-tertbutylbenzyl group. Concurrent effects of variation in ionic content and bulky group substitution were analyzed for physical and gas permeation properties of the resulting PILs. Attempted structural variations leading to simultaneous increments in ionic content and bulky groups offered amorphous polymers with acceptable thermal stability and non-monotonous chain packing density. Enhancement in pure gas permeability coupled with appreciable selectivity for various gas pairs was in accordance with the packing density variations in the series. Gas permeability showed maxima at DQ of just 13%. This conveyed that effects of bulky group substitution in retarding chain packing are overcome by attractive ionic interactions at much lower DQ in these PILs ionic interactions are thus more predominant in governing chain packing and gas permeation properties. These PILs possessed 3.3-20 times higher CO2 permeability in comparison to their parent PBI-BuI, without a significant loss in selectivity. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Foreign