Correlation between the Porosity and Permeability of a Polymer Filter Fabricated via CO2-Assisted Polymer Compression

Abstract

A porous filter was fabricated by plasticizing polymer fibers with CO2, followed by pressing and adhering; then, its gas permeability, a basic physical property of filters, was measured using N2. The as-obtained filter was well compressed and expected to approximate a sintered porous material. Therefore, the fabricated filter was analyzed by applying the Darcy law, and the correlation between its gas permeability and porosity was clarified. The gas permeability decreased owing to both pore size and porosity reduction upon increasing the degree of compression, which is a feature of the CO2-assisted polymer compression method. In particular, without any contradiction of pore size data previously reported, the gas permeability was clearly determined by the filter porosity and pore size. This study can serve as a guide for designing filters via CO2-assisted polymer compression.