Room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) are neat salts that exist in the molten state at or below ambient temperature. RTILs have a unique combination of physiochemical properties, such as negligible vapor pressure, high thermal stability, low flammability, high ionic conductivity, and intrinsic solubility for certain gases such as CO2, all of which make them very attractive for a number of engineering applications. In particular, the use of RTIL-based materials for selective gas separations has been an active area of research because of the ability to design and tune RTIL structures to enable better co-solubility/uptake of specific gas species; and the ability to synthesize RTILs into different materials morphologies (i.e., solid poly(RTIL)s, solid-liquid poly(RTIL)/RTIL composites and gels) in order to control gas diffusivity. Our research group has been working in synthesis and testing new types of RTILs, poly(RTIL)s, and related composite materials for CO2/light gas separations. In this presentation, we present advances in the design of new RTIL-based materials containing transitional-metal ions for coordination-based sorptive separations of different organic vapors and new RTIL-based composites containing zeolites for better CO2/CH4 membrane separations.

Award Address (ACS Award is Separations Science & Technology). Recent advances in the design of functional room-temperature ionic liquid-based materials for selective gas separations

249th National Meeting (2015)

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