GOALI: Routes to Improve Performance for Membrane Separation of Next Generation Biofuels for Transportation

GOALI：提高下一代运输生物燃料膜分离性能的途径

• 批准号: 1462284
• 负责人: Bryan Vogt
• 金额: $ 28.98万
• 依托单位: University of Akron
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1462284&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: GOALI; Routes; Improve; Performance; Membrane

Gasoline is generally blended with plant-derived ethanol, however, ethanol tends to increase the water content in the gasoline and decreases the engine performance. New engineering approaches allow for other fuel products to be produced from plant-derived sources, most notably butanol, which overcomes the aforementioned issues associated with ethanol. However, the butanol product is dilute in water and the water must be removed. Membranes provide a low cost solution to the butanol recovery, but there are performance trade-offs that limit its utility. This Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project will examine a new class of materials that could enable significant improvements in the performance of these membranes. Successful completion of this project would not only advance these membranes, but also accelerate their commercialization through the partnership with Promerus, LLC.The project will examine an alternative BCP system based on polynorbornenes (PNB); PNB can exhibit a high glass transition temperature (200 °C) and likely large free volume generally absent for high-Tg polymers that could enhance the flux. One critical challenge for BCPs is the development of low cost processing routes that are suitable for high volume manufacturing and yield well-defined microphase-separated structures. This project seeks to determine methodologies to controllable highly reproducible microphase-separated structures and understand their fundamental thermodynamic, dynamic and mechanical properties. Recently, Promerus LLC has developed new, functional group-tolerant polymerization initiators; enabling the synthesis of unique functionalized norbornene BCPs. It is hypothesized that the developed morphology will critically impact the membrane performance with likely trade-offs between flux and selectivity with the size of the hydrophilic/hydrophobic domains. This hypothesis will be tested using a series of copolymers by systematically varying the composition, molecular mass and alkyl side chain to understand how the BCP nanostructure acts to improve performance. The overarching goals of this project are to understand how the structure of the copolymer impacts properties critical to membrane operations and how to control this structure through processing techniques extendable to large-scale manufacturing. Fundamental investigations to elucidate morphology-mechanical property relationships and quantify impact of fouling and defouling on the mechanical, morphological, and separation properties, all as a function of processing conditions will be research. This work will provide fundamental processing-structure-property relationships for BCPs for separations and enable novel material designs for commercialization.

汽油一般与植物乙醇混合，但乙醇往往会增加汽油中的水分，降低发动机的性能。新的工程方法允许从植物来源生产其他燃料产品，最明显的是丁醇，它克服了上述与乙醇有关的问题。但是，丁醇产品在水中稀释，必须将水除去。膜为丁醇回收提供了一种低成本的解决方案，但存在性能权衡，限制了其用途。这一学术与工业联系机会(GOALI)项目将研究一类新的材料，使这些膜的性能得到显著改善。该项目的成功完成不仅将推动这些膜的发展，还将通过与Promerus，LLC的合作伙伴关系加速它们的商业化。该项目将研究一种基于聚降冰片烯(PNB)的替代BCP系统；PNB可以表现出高玻璃化转变温度(200℃)和可能的大自由体积，这对于高Tg聚合物来说通常是不存在的，这可以提高通量。BCP面临的一个关键挑战是开发适用于大批量制造并产生明确定义的微相分离结构的低成本工艺路线。该项目旨在确定可控制的、高度可重复性的微相分离结构的方法，并了解它们的基本热力学、动力学和机械性质。最近，Promerus LLC开发了新的官能团容限聚合引发剂，使合成独特的官能化降冰片烯BCP成为可能。据推测，所发展的形态将严重影响膜的性能，可能会在通量和选择性与亲水/疏水结构域大小之间进行权衡。这一假设将通过系统地改变组成、分子质量和烷基侧链的一系列共聚物来验证，以了解BCP纳米结构如何作用于改善性能。该项目的主要目标是了解共聚物的结构如何影响膜操作的关键性能，以及如何通过可扩展到大规模制造的加工技术来控制这种结构。基础研究将阐明形态-力学性能的关系，并量化污垢和污垢对机械、形态和分离性能的影响，所有这些都将作为工艺条件的函数进行研究。这项工作将为分离的BCP提供基本的工艺-结构-性能关系，并使新的材料设计能够商业化。