Selective Adsorption Analyzer

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Most industrial processes require chemicals that are pure or have been purified to some extent. Processes such as large-scale distillation and filtration are highly energy intensive and industrial chemical purification accounts for 10-15% of the world's energy consumption (Oak Ridge National Lab. Materials for Separation Technologies: Energy and Emission Reduction Opportunities (2005).) Porous solids can separate gases, akin to a molecular sponge and they can offer significant energy savings. This grant requests a piece of infrastructure with the core function of testing how gases permeate through porous solids and by doing so, enable separation of mixtures. There is other infrastructure that measures the amount of a given gas sorbed by a porous solid and its affinity for the solid. A critical and enabling difference with the requested equipment is the ability to assess multiple gases in competition as they flow through a bed of solid. Indeed, this is the needed data to derive true selectivity, process cycle times, and ultimately extrapolate energy costs. Lack of these data is recognized as a shortcoming in academic studies of porous solids (Sholl & Lively-Nature 2016, 532, 435). The technique, enabled experiments and knowledge extracted are applicable to a wide range of materials and applications and hence offers broadly relevant training. The breadth of impacted research and applicable training is reflected by the fact that the applicants span three different departments (Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Geosciences) and plan diverse experiments. Most equipment able to carry out these studies is home-built as there has not been a commercially available version. This makes comparing data across research groups challenging. Micromeritics offers a selective adsorption analyzer for the first time and no installation yet exists in Canada. As such, only a single vendor is provided.(ATS-Scientific)