A novel cellulose–silicalite-1 membrane with excellent gas separation property

A novel strategy for synthesizing silicalite-1 membrane by hydrothermal synthesis without organic template after coating the support with a mixture of modified cellulose and seeds was successfully proposed. The membrane possesses high ideal separation factors of H2 over various gases which is larger than the corresponding Knudsen diffusion coefficients. The selectivity of AcOH from AcOH/H2O mixtures can reach to 65 and stable for 180 h. The characterization results by XRD and SEM showed that the excellent performance can be attributed to both modified cellulose and the synthesis without organic template. Modified cellulose attracted more silicalite-1 nutrients to the support and assisted the synthesis of more compact silicalite-1 zeolite membrane. Calcination after synthesis was avoided, thus avoiding macrostructure defects appearing during the process of calcination.