SYNergistic SORBents

ongoing

This is the “Age of Gas”; disruptive new technologies must develop around the use of gases as fuels, therapies or feedstock chemicals. Specifically, new approaches to gas storage (transportation and delivery) and purification (commodities) are urgently needed to address the large energy footprint, cost and/or risk associated with existing technologies (e.g. chemisorbents). In particular, water and chemical commodity purification are global challenges, each consuming > 10% of global energy output. SYNSORB will reduce the energy footprint of purification processes through crystal engineering (design), characterisation (structure/function) and modelling (binding interactions) studies that enable understanding of how pore size /chemistry impact the properties and performance of physisorbents. Our objective is to find the energetic sweet spots that enable new benchmarks for selectivity and working capacity for gas (e.g. CH4, C2, C3) and vapour (e.g. H2O) purification at practically relevant conditions. Key scientific impacts include the following: (i) Understanding how pore size/chemistry impact selectivity, binding energy and kinetics of physisorption will afford fundamental knowledge concerning optimal pore size/chemistry for ultra-selective removal of both trace (< 1%) and bulk impurities. (ii) Trace gas removal from even binary gas mixtures was unattainable by physisorbents until recently, when new classes of ultramicroporous materials, HUMs (introduced by the PI in Nature, 2013, and Science, 2016) and AUMs were introduced. The nature of HUMs/AUMs means that they offer new benchmarks for selectivity by > one order of magnitude vs. zeolites and MOFs, thereby enabling removal of trace impurities. (iii) SYNSORB will address purification of multi-component gas mixtures that mimic real world gas mixtures by using bespoke sorbents for each trace impurity (see Scheme below), enabling 1-step removal of multiple impurities for the first time.