News

The most challenging issue of the 21^st century is how to curb our reliance on fossil fuels and decarbonize our economy, as fossil fuels still dominate global energy production, leading to a sharp increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, until this puzzle is solved, technologies for CO₂ capture are needed. Among the technologies, adsorption processes that use porous materials as adsorbents are promising because they allow fine-tuning of the thermodynamics of the interaction between CO₂ and the adsorbent surface.

Researchers at the National Institute of Chemistry Slovenia and the Centre for Education and Research on Macromolecules (CERM) at the University of Liège have designed a new one-pot synthesis approach and developed highly-porous polymer foams that are used as CO₂ capture materials. The resulting bifunctional imidazolium/amine polymer foams, which contain tunable ratios of these functional groups within the macromolecular network, exhibit unique textural and structural properties, resulting in rapid CO₂ sorption kinetics and excellent ability to selectively capture CO₂ from the gas mixture. Thus, the exceptional CO₂ capture performance of the bifunctional foams was attributed to the combination of a highly porous structure and the synergy between the imidazolium and amine functional groups. The disclosed features of these polymer foams will be a great incentive for further development of new organic CO₂  sorbents.

The results were published in Chemical Engineering Journal as a research article entitled 'Bifunctional Imidazolium/Amine Polymer Foams: Synthesis and Synergistic Promotion of CO₂ Sorption'.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1385894722025049?via%3Dihub

Contact: sebastijan.kovacic(at)ki.si