Journal of Membrane Science 193 (2001) 1–18 Review A review on the latest development of carbon membranes for gas separation A.F. Ismail ∗ , L.I.B. David Membrane Research Unit, Faculty of Chemical and Natural Resources Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia Received 17 January 2001; received in revised form 18 May 2001; accepted 22 May 2001 Abstract Inorganic membranes have been developed before 1945. The earlier application of inorganic membranes was primarily concentrate on military purpose. Carbon membrane is one type of porous inorganic membrane. Although the concept of carbon membrane for gas separation has been found in the early 1970, the interest to develop carbon membrane only increased, since Koresh and Soffer successfully prepared apparently crack-free molecular sieving hollow fiber carbon membranes. Nowadays, plenty of researchers have used different polymeric materials; including polyimides, to prepare carbon membranes by using pyrolysis. In general, carbon membranes can be divided into four major configurations: flat sheet, membrane supported on tube, capillary, and hollow fiber. Permeation properties of carbon membranes have been improved greatly in these 20 years. Carbon membranes offer advantages over polymeric membranes especially in terms of selectivity as well as thermal and chemical stability. More attention will be paid to carbon membranes in this century. This paper will review the development of carbon membranes in the last 30 years and give a clear future direction in research for carbon membrane. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Inorganic membranes; Carbon membranes; Fiber membranes; Porous membranes; Gas separations 1. Introduction The development of porous inorganic membranes dates from before 1945, long before the develop- ment of today’s synthetic organic membranes. Not much publicity was given to the early development of inorganic membranes because the first porous in- organic membranes were developed for separation of uranium isotopes, therefore, they were mainly used for military purposes or nuclear applications [1]. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +60-7-5505392; fax: +60-7-5581463. E-mail address: afauzi@utm.my (A.F. Ismail). Non-nuclear applications of inorganic membranes started at the beginning of the 1980s with Mem- bralox produced by Ceraver (now SCT), Carbosep produced by SFEC (now TECHSEP) and Ceraflo produced by Norton (now by SCT) [2]. The potential of inorganic membranes was not widely recognized until high quality porous ceramic membranes were produced for industrial usage on a large scale [3]. Nowadays, inorganic membranes are used primarily for civilian energy-related applications. They have become important tools for beverage production, wa- ter purification and the separation of dairy products [1]. In addition, they play a significant role in the gas separation processes of industrial sector. Numerous 0376-7388/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0376-7388(01)00510-5