Department of Chemical Engineering Presents

Growing evidence indicates that the CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are contributing to global climate change. One indispensable approach to controlling CO2 emissions to the atmosphere is carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) from large point sources, such as coal power plants. Membrane technology has emerged as an important separation technology for CO2 capture due to the inherently high energy efficiency. Conventional membrane material designs are often focused on rigid polymers with strong size sieving ability to enhance gas diffusivity selectivity. In contrast, our research focuses on the exploration of specific interactions between the gas and membrane materials to achieve high solubility selectivity and thus the separation. In this presentation, I will discuss the design and synthesis of polymers containing ether oxygens with strong affinity towards CO2, thus achieving high CO2/N2 separation for CO2 capture from the flue gas derived from coal power plants. I will also describe the design of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) containing palladium (Pd) nanoparticles, which have strong affinity towards H2 and thus extremely high H2/CO2 solubility selectivity at 50-200 o C. The increase of Pd loading in polymers can increase the H2/CO2 selectivity by as much as 200%.