Descrizione del progetto
Dare un impulso alla cattura del carbonio grazie a nanomateriali ad alte prestazioni ed elevata efficienza energetica
Le tecnologie di cattura del carbonio svolgono un ruolo critico nella riduzione della CO2 atmosferica, data la difficoltà insita nel raggiungere le zero emissioni nel prossimo futuro. Il lavaggio con ammina è una tecnica che viene impiegata per separare la CO2 dal gas naturale e dall’idrogeno da oltre un secolo, ma la quantità di energia richiesta a tal scopo è notevole. Il progetto UltimateMembranes, finanziato dall’UE, svilupperà membrane di separazione ad alte prestazioni per diverse applicazioni di cattura del carbonio avvalendosi dell’ingegneria dei cristalli. Le membrane realizzate saranno bidimensionali, nanoporose, stabili a livello termico e chimico, nonché selettive in base alle dimensioni; esse ridurranno il consumo energetico e intensificheranno il processo, risultando al contempo rispettose dell’ambiente e compatibili con un tipo di funzionamento decentralizzato.
Obiettivo
The EU integrated strategic energy technology plan, SET-plan, in its 2016 progress report, has called for urgent measures on the carbon capture, however, the high energy-penalty and environmental issues related to the conventional capture process (amine-based scrubbing) has been a major bottleneck. High-performance membranes can reduce the energy penalty for the capture, are environment-friendly (no chemical is used, no waste is generated), can intensify chemical processes, and can be employed for the capture in a decentralized fashion. However, a technological breakthrough is needed to realize such chemically and thermally stable, high-performance membranes. This project seeks to develop the ultimate high-performance membranes for H2/CO2 (pre-combustion capture), CO2/N2 (post-combustion capture), and CO2/CH4 separations (natural gas sweetening). Based on calculations, these membranes will yield a gigantic gas permeance (1 and 0.1 million GPU for the H2 and the CO2 selective membranes, respectively), 1000 and 10-fold higher than that of the state-of-the-art polymeric and nanoporous membranes, respectively, reducing capital expenditure per unit performance and the needed membrane area. For this, we introduce three novel concepts, combining the top-down and the bottom-up crystal engineering approaches to develop size-selective, chemically and thermally stable, nanoporous two-dimensional membranes. First, exfoliated nanoporous 2d nanosheets will be stitched in-plane to synthesize the truly-2d membranes. Second, metal-organic frameworks will be confined across a nanoporous 2d matrix to prepare a composite 2d membrane. Third, atom-thick graphene films with tunable, uniform and size-selective nanopores will be crystallized using a novel thermodynamic equilibrium between the lattice growth and etching. Overall, the innovative concepts developed here will open up several frontiers on the synthesis of high-performance membranes for a wide-range of separation processes.
Campo scientifico
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcrystals
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materialstwo-dimensional nanostructuresgraphene
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsfossil energynatural gas
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringcarbon capture engineering
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
1015 Lausanne
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