Nanostructured membranes for selective toxic gas separation

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The key research goals in this project are:

• To prepare and characterise novel polymers and polymer nanocomposites.
• To fabricate these materials into membranes and assess the resulting technology’s ability to reduce their pollution in chemical industries.

The details

The global chemical industry is facing a crisis in dealing with polluting emissions and the resulting environmental impact. This PhD program is focused on solving these problems through technology development and will create novel membrane technology that is specifically designed to actively sieve out toxic gases from industrial emissions.

This technology also has a lower energy duty compared to competitive approaches, arising from the straightforward approach of using a barrier material, through which some chemical gases pass unrestricted due to their favourable affinity with the membrane. The membrane technology will be based on polymers of intrinsic microporosity, a new class of polymers that have high free volume characteristics that provide them with unique opportunities to sieve gases selectively.

This program focuses on the preparation and characterisation of novel polymers and polymer nanocomposites, specifically tailoring the functionality for toxic gases, then fabricating these materials into membranes and testing the resulting technology under industrial conditions. The outcome will be implementation of membrane technology in chemical industries to reduce their pollution problem.

The graduate researcher on this project is: Ming Yu

Supervision team

• The University of Melbourne: Associate Professor Colin Scholes
• The University of Manchester: Professor Peter Budd