Ionic liquids (ILs) are salts with wide liquidus range and negligible vapor pressures. Due to inefficient packings of bulky ions, CO2 can readily dissolve by occupying the free volume of ILs. With the incorporation of CO2 reactive functional groups and molecular design of ILs, the gravimetric CO2 capacity can be further increased specifically for low partial pressure conditions. We demonstrate the utility of ILs in different structural supports as CO2 absorbers for packed-bed and membrane type separations. Specifically, we synthesized CO2-reactive ILs (rILs) that can achieve significant CO2 uptake at low partial pressures of CO2 and then formulate IL-rIL mixtures where the CO2 capacity, uptake rate and diffusivity can be modulated. Furthermore, we have encapsulated these ILs via Pickering emulsions where the resulting capsule has a porous shell made of graphene oxide and polyurea, and an IL core within. These rIL capsules show enhanced mass transfer rates compared to bulk rIL due to the increased gas/liquid surface-to-volume area by encapsulation. Such strategy can be adapted for CO2 scrubbing technologies requiring on-board capture such as automobiles, spacecrafts and submarines. Compared with conventional scrubbing materials like zeolite or primary amine-based reagent, rIL capsule composite materials show greater energy efficiency and higher CO2 capacity. Alternatively, we have fabricated polymer-IL composites as membranes via solution casting in order to adapt ILs for continuous gas separations suitable for post-process gas mixtures such as flue gas from coal-fired power plants.

Composite materials based on ionic liquids for CO2 separations

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.