NAnostructured Surface Activated ultra-thin Oxygen Transport Membrane

Objective

The main objective of the proposed project is the development and industry-driven evaluation of highly stable and highly oxygen-permeable nano-structured oxygen transport membrane (OTM) assemblies with infinite selectivity for oxygen separation from air. The new approach proposed to reach this objective is the development of ultra thin membrane layers by e.g. CVD, PVD or Sol-Gel techniques with catalytic activation of the surfaces. This approach is supposed to make available highly stable membrane materials, which are currently out of discussion as the oxygen permeation measured on thick membranes is too low. Sufficiently high oxygen fluxes shall be obtained by (i) ultra thin membrane layers on porous supports to minimize diffusion barriers; (ii) catalytic surface activation to overcome slow surface exchange/reaction kinetics; and (iii) thin-film nano-structuring, generating new diffusion paths through the grain boundaries in a nano-crystalline matrix. The membrane development is supported by thermo-mechanical modelling as well as atomistic modelling of transport properties. The produced oxygen is provided to Oxyfuel power plants or chemical processes such as oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) to higher hydrocarbons or HCN synthesis, which will contribute in a way to the mitigation of CO2 emissions. Oxyfuel power plants combust fuels using pure oxygen forming primarily CO2 and H2O making it much easier and cheaper to capture the CO2 than by using air. The major advantages of OTM are significantly lower efficiency losses than conventional technologies and the in principle infinite oxygen selectivity. OCM produces higher hydrocarbons directly without forming CO2 and HCN synthesis can be improved by process intensification resulting in energy and subsequent CO2 savings.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds
• natural sciences chemical sciences organic chemistry hydrocarbons
• natural sciences chemical sciences organic chemistry aliphatic compounds
• engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

• CO2 emission free power plant
• CVD
• Mixed Ionic Electronic Conductors
• Oxygen Transport Membrane
• PVD
• Sol-Gel
• catalytic surface activation
• nano-structuring

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-NMP - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• NMP-2008-2.1-1 - Nanostructured membrane materials

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-NMP-2008-SMALL-2
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research project

Coordinator

Participants (7)