Materials for Separation Technologies. Energy and Emission Reduction Opportunities

A Fine-Tuned Fluorinated MOF Addresses the Needs for Trace CO2 Removal and Air Capture Using Physisorption

“…Inopportunely, the worldwide energy needs have doubled the fossil fuel consumption in the last two decades, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] as a result of the eminent economic growth and the enhanced quality of living in emerging countries, and thus provoking the manifest and amplified global carbon dioxide emission. The foreseen deployment of a relatively cleaner alternative energy sources, e.g.…”

“…Explicitly, point-source carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be regarded as a plausible solution sanctioning the sustainable use of fossil fuels in power, steel and cement production plants, while direct air capture (DAC) can address and remediate the CO 2 emissions from mobile-sources such as automobiles and airplanes. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Markedly, the DAC offers a great prospective to remotely capture the emitted CO 2 at a different distant location and time. It is to note that the CO 2 capture from air using the chemical adsorption technology has been deployed, for over seven decades, to maintain a safe level of CO 2 in confined spaces such as space shuttles and submarines, where access to fresh air is limited.…”

“…12,13 Nevertheless, the CO 2 concentrations and the associated CO 2 quantities to the DAC (400 ppm CO 2 , worldwide average of 54 kg/person/day) and to the point-source CCS (7-15% CO 2 , worldwide average of 38 kg/person/day) entail a relatively larger scale footprint and/or an excessive energy penalty than the requisites for the CO 2 capture in confined spaces (1-5 % CO 2 and 1 kg/person/day). [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Perceptibly, the cost associated to the CO 2 capture in confined spaces is not a disturbing concern, as the compulsory objective is the effective removal of CO 2 and the subsequent procurement of the indispensable clean air. Noticeably, the low CO 2 concentration in air (400 ppm) and the compulsory low CO 2 level in confined spaces (< 0.5 %) position chemical adsorbents, such as aqueous alkylamine solutions and lithium hydroxide (LiOH) (80-120 kJ/mol), as the conventional benchmark materials, with a high CO 2 -selectivity even in the presence of water vapor, for the carbon capture in diluted CO 2 concentrations 8 Nevertheless, largescale widespread of the chemically driven separation approach is hampered by the prohibitive high-energy requirement for the CO 2 desorption/regeneration process.…”

Harnessing mass differential confinement effects in magnetized rotating plasmas to address new separation needs

“…The same study projects that implementing energy efficient separation techniques in the U. S. petroleum, chemical and paper manufacturing sectors alone could save 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and $4 billion in energy costs annually. Besides the economical incentive, the development of innovative separation techniques is also motivated by their anticipated enabling role in many applications [2,3].…”

Negative cooperativity upon hydrogen bond-stabilized O2 adsorption in a redox-active metal–organic framework

“…The development of a metal-organic framework capable of cooperative O 2 adsorption could be advantageous for a number of applications in industry, including energy-efficient O 2 production 11,12 , O 2 storage [13][14][15] , and catalysis 16,17 . Iron- 18,19 , chromium- 20,21 , manganese- 22 , copper- 23 , and cobalt-based 24,25 frameworks have previously been shown to bind O 2 via reversible reduction upon metal coordination, but the poor chemical stability of many of these materials to O 2 limits their cyclable capacity under ambient conditions.…”