ABSTRACT
Inorganic membranes are considered as candidate materials for gas separation. For high separation factors obviously the pore size of these membranes must lie in the microporous range at most. Amorphous silica, zeolite, porous glass and hollow carbon fibers are known to show such small pore sizes. The synthesis and processing of such membranes however is still a difficult task owing to the complications involved in packing these fine structures into a form which can withstand high temperature and pressure conditions during testing. This chapter is dedicated to an overview of the synthesis and processing conditions of one of these membranes, namely silica which has the maximum flexibility in synthesis and hence is projected to be the most interesting microporous membrane material.
