Physical aging is currently a major obstacle for the commercialization of PIM-1 membranes for gas separation applications. A well-known approach to reversing physical aging effects of PIM-1 membranes at laboratory scale is soaking them in lower alcohols, such as methanol and ethanol. However, this procedure does not seem applicable at industrial level, and other strategies must be investigated. In this work, a regeneration method with alcohol vapors (ethanol or methanol) was developed to recover permeability of aged PIM-1 membranes, in comparison with the conventional soaking-in-liquid approach. The gas permeability and separation performance, before and post the regeneration methods, were assessed using a binary mixture of CO₂ and CH₄ (1:1, v:v). Our results show that an 8-hour methanol vapor treatment was sufficient to recover the original gas permeability, reaching a CO₂ permeability > 7000 barrer.

当前，物理老化是用于气体分离应用的PIM-1膜商业化的主要障碍。在实验室规模上逆转PIM-1膜的物理老化作用的一种众所周知的方法是将其浸泡在低级醇（例如甲醇和乙醇）中。但是，此过程似乎不适用于工业级别，因此必须研究其他策略。在这项工作中，与传统的液体浸泡方法相比，开发了一种使用醇蒸气（乙醇或甲醇）的再生方法来恢复老化的PIM-1膜的渗透性。使用CO ₂和CH ₄的二元混合物评估再生方法之前和之后的透气性和分离性能（1：1，v：v）。我们的结果表明，8小时的甲醇蒸气处理足以恢复原始的气体渗透率，达到的CO ₂渗透率> 7000 barrer。