Porous Liquids: New porous liquids for gas separation and carbon capture

In order to counter climate change, an enhanced treatment of CO₂ and other harmful industrial emissions is required. Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are sought as a short-term and long-term CO₂ mitigation strategies. Central to both is the carbon capture process. Contemporary technologies have several drawbacks, like not being efficient enough or hazardous to health.

In our project we aim at developing an environmentally friendly and efficient separation technology for CO₂ based on a new class of macromolecule-based systems: Pillar[n]arenes (P[n]As) are a new class of macrocycle compounds made of hydroquinone units (with n=5,6,7,…). They are easy to synthesize and handle, have high chemical and thermal stability, and can be made water-soluble.

P[n]As can be turned into highly porous materials with many and different kinds of adsorption sites. We will synthesize and characterize both experimentally and theoretically a so far unexploited system for carbon capture application. Computational modelling will help to gain an atomic-level understanding of the CO₂ adsorption at P[n]A-based systems and verify the P[n]A-materials potential for CO₂ capture by absorption and adsorption application under realistic conditions.

At the end of the project, we will propose a new material for carbon capture that is easy to synthesize, cheap, recyclable, is highly selective, and has a high capacity (technology readiness level 2 to 4).