Recently, the hollow fiber membrane contactor pilot unit (MBC system) for CO₂ removal from natural gas, which is jointly developed by Prof.CAO Yiming's team and PETRONAS, has been commissioned successfully. It was the first membrane contactor system for the purification of high pressure natural gas in the world. The design pressure was 6.6 MPa. The developed MBC system, which was manufactured according to PETRONAS standards, was able to reduce the CO₂ content in natural gas below 1 %. At present, the MBC system has been delivered to Malaysia natural gas processing plant for industrial test. 

Since the contract signing, sciencetists completed the development of PTFE hollow fiber membrane, the design and evaluation of membrane module structure as well as the sealing of epoxy head, and successfully developed the Ф200X2000mm high pressure membrane contactor element under the guide of Academician Yuan Quan and Prof. CAO Yiming. The R&D of PTFE hollow fiber membrane was funded by Shanghai Bi Ke Clean Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (CECC). The MBC pilot unit was designed according to ASME standard. The design, purchase, manufacture and acceptance were managed by PETRONAS standard. 

Hollow fiver membrane contactor technology integrates the advantages of membrane separation and traditional absorption process, including low energy consumption, high separation efficiency, high HC recovery, compact equipment, little covering area and simple operation. CO₂ is a kind of greenhouse gases. The successful development of MBC system has important significance to the separation and capture of CO₂. This technology has wide application prospect, not only for the purification of natural gas (especially on offshore platform) and biogas, but also for the capture of CO₂ from flue gas. (By KANG Guodong) 

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Fig. MBC pilot unit(left) & MBC pilot unit delivery (right) 

Contact: 

Prof. CAO Yiming 

Email: ymcao@dicp.ac.cn