In this paper, the effect of hydrogen reduction of silver ions on the performance and structure of new solid polymer electrolyte polyetherimide (PEI)/Pebax2533 (Polynylon12/tetramethylene oxide block copolymer, PA12-PTMO)/AgBF4 composite membranes is investigated. For PEI/Pebax2533/AgBF4 composite membranes prepared with different AgBF4 concentration, the permeances of propylene and ethylene increase with the increase of AgBF4 concentration due to the carrier-facilitated transport, resulting in a high selectivity. But for propyl-ene/propane mixture, the mixed-gas selectivity is lower than its ideal selectivity. The hydrogen reduction strongly influences the membrane performance, which causes the decrease of propylene permeance and the increase of pro-pane permeance. With the increase of hydrogen reduction time, the membranes show a clearly color change from white to brown, yielding a great selectivity loss. The data of X-ray diffraction and FT-IR prove that silver ions are reduced to Ag0 after hydrogen reduction, and aggregated on the surface of PEI/Pebax2533/AgBF4 composite mem-branes.
