I-Corps: Membrane Materials for Efficient Gas and Vapor Separations

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种用于工业气体和蒸汽分离的膜技术。有效的膜分离技术不仅有可能降低化工行业的能源消耗，加速绿色替代能源的采用，而且还可以减少温室气体的排放。用薄膜取代现有的能源密集型工艺，可能会使美国每年的能源成本减少40亿美元，并减少1亿吨二氧化碳排放。部署高效的膜净化氢气和天然气也可能加快煤炭发电的替代，而实施从烟道气中分离二氧化碳的膜可能会将碳捕获成本降低50%。然而，尽管膜具有巨大的潜力，但现有材料的分离性能不足阻碍了膜的广泛采用。这项拟议的技术使用了能够根据气体分子大小进行精确分离的分子过滤器，并实现了目前在工业上尚未解决的分离，这可能会实现基于能效的膜技术的全部潜力。这个i-Corps项目专注于开发分子过滤器，其设计使其具有与气体分子相似的孔径，使其成为特殊的分子筛。传统的膜材料由单链和柔性的聚合物链组成，它们在固态中有效地堆积，导致膜中几乎没有孔。这种致密的堆积导致生产率有限，因为分子不能在致密的材料中快速扩散。这些材料的选择性较低，因为它们不能根据大小区分分子。拟议设计中的材料代表了聚合物化学和材料工程的转变。一个刚性的梯形或双链分子基序被结合到聚合物链中。这些刚性梯形图案防止了固态中高聚物链的紧密堆积，导致了丰富的微孔率，可用于分子分离。通过系统地调节这些梯形基序的构象，可以同时为特定的应用定制膜的生产率和选择性。除了在能源领域的潜在应用，该项目还可能提供重要的智力见解，以指导对多孔有机材料的理解和设计，以及其他尚未开发的应用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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 I-Corps project is the development of a membrane technology for industrial gas and vapor separations. Effective membrane separation technology has the potential not only to reduce the energy consumption of chemical industries and accelerate the adoption of green alternative energy sources, but also to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases. Replacing existing energy-intensive processes with membranes may reduce annual U.S. energy costs by $4 billion and eliminate 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Deploying efficient membranes for the purification of hydrogen and natural gas also may accelerate the replacement of coal for electricity generation, while implementing membranes for carbon dioxide separation from flue gas may reduce the cost of carbon capture by 50%. Despite their great potential, however, the broad adoption of membranes has been hampered by the inadequate separation performance of existing materials. The proposed technology uses molecular filters capable of performing precise separations based on gas molecule size, and enables separations currently unaddressed in industry that may realize the full potential of energy-efficient membrane-based technologies. This I-Corps project focuses on the development of molecular filters engineered to have similar pore sizes to gas molecules, making them exceptional molecular sieves. Traditional membrane materials consist of single-stranded and flexible polymer chains that pack efficiently in the solid state, leading to virtually no pores in the membranes. This dense packing results in limited productivity because molecules could not diffuse quickly through the dense material. The materials had low selectivity because they could not distinguish molecules by size. The materials in the proposed design represent a shift in polymer chemistry and materials engineering. A rigid ladder, or double-stranded, molecular motif was incorporate into the polymer chains. These rigid ladder motifs prevent the dense packing of polymer chains in the solid-state, leading to abundant microporosity that may be leveraged for molecular separations. By systematically tuning the conformation of these ladder motifs, the productivity and selectivity of the membrane may be simultaneously tailored for specific applications. In addition to the potential applications in the energy sector, this project may provide important intellectual insights to guide the understanding and design of porous organic materials with other applications yet to be explored.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.