A simple method for healing nonzeolitic pores of MFI membranes by hydrolysis of silanes

In this paper, we proposed a simple method with hydrolysis of silanes to heal nonzeolitic pores of pure silica MFI (silicalite) zeolite membranes. Three silane precursors, tetraethoxysilane (TEOS), tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) and dimethoxydimethylsilane (DMDS) were used for membrane modification at room temperature. The modified membranes were evaluated by the separation of p-/o-xylene mixture. It was found that the hydrolysis of silanes in nonzeolitic pores could obviously improve separation performance of the MFI zeolite membranes. The modification results of nonzeolitic pores were related to the silane precursors with different physical–chemical properties and molecular kinetic diameter. Compared with TEOS and TMOS, DMDS was more suitable as a precursor for healing nonzeolitic pores. For a zeolite membrane after DMDS modification, p-/o-xylene separation factor could be increased from 2.34 to 10.84 while p-xylene flux decreased only about 12.6%.