Research Projects

The separation and purification of valuable products like vapors and gases is a challenging task that consumes nearly 15% of global energy. Distillation remains the most commonly used practice for separation of industrially relevant mixtures, but there is a need to design ordered materials with appropriate pore size to make the separation process faster and more efficient. Membrane-based processes can achieve up to 90% of energy conservation if distillation processes are replaced by membrane-based processes. The capture of carbon dioxide from flue gas poses a serious threat to our existence, as the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere is increasing, leading to increased global warming. To achieve successful carbon capture and utilization, materials should selectively adsorb carbon dioxide in the presence of other gases and moisture. Proposed Plan Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have shown great potential for various applications such as gas storage, separation, and catalysis due to their inherent advantage of structure tunability. The current project proposal involves designing and synthesizing microporous MOF structures for gas/vapour separation and CO₂ capture. The strategy will employ combinations of rigid linkers (L1) to form a stable layered structure and suitable linkers (L2) to act as pillars, controlling the pore window of these MOFs. Secondary functional groups such as amine will be introduced to promote host-guest interactions, increasing adsorption kinetics. Preliminary results on separation of xylene isomers with less than 1 Å difference in size have been obtained using this approach. This approach will be extended to target other separations such as olefin-paraffin, branched and unbranched alkanes, CO₂/CH4, etc.