Toray to install pilot facility for all-carbon CO2 separation membrane mass production

Toray Industries Inc. (Tokyo, Japan) announced that it is installing a pilot facility for its all-carbon carbon dioxide (CO₂) separation membrane at its Shiga Plant. The new facility should become operational in the fiscal year starting April 1, 2025 and will be used to mass produce this membrane technology.

An all-carbon CO₂ separation membrane owes its high performance to a dual layer structure, comprising a thin carbon film separation layer on the surface of a hollow fiber porous carbon fiber support. Making the support as thin as possible reduces the membrane module’s weight and size. Notably, a CO₂ separation membrane element bundles all carbon CO₂ separation membranes within a housing. It enables the independent recovery of gases that permeate the membrane and those that do not. Densely packing hollow fiber CO₂ separation membranes inside the element enables a more compact design by making it possible to increase the membrane surface area per unit volume (read “Porous carbon fiber: Permeable, adsorptive and conductive”).

Toray says it will collaborate with biogas and natural gas production developers, related engineering manufacturers and other external partners to validate the pilot facility’s results, with the goal of putting the CO₂ separate membrane elements to practical use in the following fiscal year.

CO₂ emissions from natural gas are relatively low when burned, so its use as a stable energy source should continue to grow. In recent years, an emphasis on developing gas fields with low CO₂ concentrations has heightened demand for more efficient CO₂ separation and recovery technology in view of a need to exploit gas fields with higher residual CO₂ concentrations.

Therefore, Torays believe it will be vital to develop technologies that can efficiently separate and recover CO₂ from biogas derived from biomass —  which is a mixture of methane and CO₂ — and from waste gases containing nitrogen and CO₂, using these technologies for carbon capture and storage, and carbon capture and use.

Toray research laboratories have confirmed the high separation performance and durability of its proprietary, all-carbon CO₂ separation membrane in gas environments containing impurities. Moreover, the company has refined its hollow fiber spinning and thin-layer coating technologies, establishing a film production process capable of producing consistently stable membranes. Simultaneously, it developed core technology for manufacturing membrane elements that bundle CO₂ separation membranes.

Using small membrane elements it created, the company successfully demonstrated CO₂ separation from biogas and exhaust gas emissions at its Tokai Plant, maintaining consistent CO₂ separation performance for a full week. This demonstration confirmed the technology’s applicability for separating methane and nitrogen from CO₂. Additionally, the biogas used at the Tokai Plant during the demonstration contained more than 1,000 parts per million of aromatic hydrocarbons alongside CO₂, for a composition similar to that of natural gas.

Toray believes the technology should find wide-ranging applications, not only in biogas but also in natural gas production and in enhancing the efficiency of CO₂ separation for CCS and CCU, where CO₂ separation is essential.