PFI-TT: Commercialization of advanced bipolar membranes for applications in water treatment, carbon-dioxide capture and utilization, and environmental remediation

这项创新技术转化伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是改进使用双极膜（bpm）的现有工业流程，例如生产用于水处理的酸和碱，并实现新的流程，例如从海洋和空气中捕获二氧化碳并将其用于形成燃料和化学品。到2027年，全球市场收入预计将从9000万美元增加到2.4亿美元，如果bpm被用于新兴的二氧化碳捕获和利用应用，可能会有更大的增长。该项目将使商业BPM流程的运行速度比现有流程快10倍，从而显著降低成本。拟议的项目将解决以下关键挑战：(1)开发粘合剂工艺，以保持或改善目前小规模研究中无粘合剂制造的bpm的电化学性能，这对于应用和长期耐用性至关重要；(2)表征和优化BPM离子选择性，并在商业相关的电渗析系统中展示改进的性能；(3)开发和使用加速压力测试来预测优化BPM的寿命终止电渗析性能，并将其性能和寿命与当前的商业BPM进行比较，同时减轻已确定的退化模式，以实现产生至少两年寿命的设计。(4)开发可扩展的卷对卷流程，用于可扩展的BPM制造。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to improve existing industrial processes using bipolar membranes (BPMs), such as the production of acid and base for water treatment, and enable new ones, such as capturing carbon dioxide from the ocean and air and using it to form fuels and chemicals. The global market revenue expected to increase from $90 M to $240 M by 2027, with greater growth possible if BPMs are used in emerging carbon dioxide capture and utilization applications. This project will enable commercial BPM processes to durably operate 10x faster than existing processes, therefore dramatically lowering cost. The proposed project will address key challenges to: (1) develop adhesive processes that maintain or improve upon the electrochemical performance in current small-scale research BPMs made without adhesive, which is essential for applications and long-term durability; (2) characterize and optimize the BPM ion selectivity and demonstrate improved performance in commercially relevant electrodialysis systems, (3) develop and use accelerated stress tests to forecast end-of-life electrodialysis performance for optimized BPMs and compare the performance and lifetimes to current commercial BPMs, while mitigating the identified degradation modes to implement designs that yield a lifetime of a minimum of two years, and (4) develop a scalable roll-to-roll process for scalable BPM fabrication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.