Most chemical processes are currently heavily dependent on harmful volatile solvents and energy-intensive distillation due to its ease of separation. Recently, switchable solvents have emerged as a promising energy-efficient (green) alternative for solvent recovery. Switchable solvents offer facile reversible tuning of the physiochemical properties of the solvent triggered by carbon dioxide (CO2) under moderate conditions (i.e., room temperature and atmospheric pressure), In particular case of switchable hydrophilicity solvents (SHSs), SHS shows dramatic change in hydrophilicity in presence and absence of CO2 and water, which provides a promising alternative green strategy to various fields including recycling of mixed plastic and extraction of algae oil. Despite intriguing characteristics of switchable solvents, the time- and labor-intensive nature of conventional flask-based screening methods have hindered the adoption of SHSs by chemical industries, due to the lack of comprehensive understanding of thermodynamic characteristics and separation efficiencies of CO2-mediated SHSs. In this project, we developed and utilized a time- and material-efficient microfluidic approach for accelerated in-situ studies of CO2-mediated SHSs. The single-droplet microreactor utilizes a tubular membrane reactor which significantly increases the gas-liquid interfacial area for CO2 injection into the SHS mixture, removing mass transfer limitation in conventional batch reactors. Utilizing the developed microfluidic platform, we studied in detail effects of molecular structure of SHSs and its concentration on efficiency and kinetics of SHS extraction under different process parameters such as CO2 pressure and reaction time. The fundamental understanding and the intensified continuous flow reactor developed in this work will accelerate the development of distillation-free solvent removal and recovery strategies towards achieving a green and sustainable chemical processing.

Switchable hydrophilicity solvents: Single-droplet studies of CO2-mediated solvent extraction in an intensified flow reactor

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.