Study group of Shao Road, Harbin University of technology on the preparation of CO 2 capture membrane

Recently, Shao Lu, a professor of the school of chemical engineering and chemistry of Harbin University of technology and a member of the State Key Laboratory of urban water resources and water environment, has made important research results in the field of synthesis of high permeability and high strength CO 2 affinity separation membrane, which is based on the cross-linked polyethylene oxide（ In order to improve the gas permeability and mechanical properties of PEO separation membrane, branched interpenetrating molecules were formed in situ The research results are entitled "modeling chains mixing plant root branching to build mechanical robust, ultra stable Co 2-physical membranes for superior carbon capture", and published in J mater Chem A, 2019, 7, 16704-16711, impact factor 10.733), and was selected as the back cover of current magazine PEO is a kind of polymer material with strong CO 2 affinity, and it is an ideal membrane material for CO 2 separation The strong affinity of PEO to CO2 is due to the dipole quadrupole interaction between the ether oxygen repeat unit in PEO chain and CO2 molecule However, due to the highly regular chain segment, pure PEO materials are easy to form polymer crystallization, which greatly reduces the free volume of PEO and seriously affects the dissolution and diffusion of gas molecules in PEO Therefore, cross-linking, blending, hybridization and pre copolymerization are often used to inhibit the crystallization of PEO, so as to improve the gas transport properties of PEO Among them, cross-linking is the most commonly used and effective method to improve the performance of PEO separation membrane, but at present, the CO 2 flux of most cross-linked PEO separation membrane is low Shaolu group has developed a semi IPN separation membrane based on UV cross-linked PEO system in the early research The low molecular weight linear PEO molecule is introduced into the UV cross-linked PEO in situ, and the CO 2 permeation flux of PEO based separation membrane is increased to 2980 barrer at one stroke However, due to the fluidity of low molecular weight linear PEO molecules, the structural stability of this kind of PEO with high permeability under high pressure test environment is weakened In order to overcome the problem of poor mechanical properties of semi IPN PEO membrane, Shaolu group, inspired by plant roots, designed a new semi IPN membrane containing branched PEO interpenetrating molecular chain in the latest research results The main reason for the poor structural stability of low molecular weight PEO doped semi interpenetrating networks is that it is difficult to form stable entanglement between linear PEO molecules and crosslinked networks, and the structure is relatively loose Therefore, the linear PEO molecules are abandoned in the branched semi interpenetrating separation membrane, but the two-step method is adopted Firstly, the thermo crosslinked PEO membrane with excellent swelling property of PEO is prepared, and then the low molecular weight PEO monomer with dual functional degree is impregnated into the thermo crosslinked PEO crosslinking network Finally, the PEO interpenetrating molecular chain with branched structure is formed in the crosslinked PEO network through in-situ secondary polymerization, forming a new one The structure of semi IPN of type A strong dynamic entanglement can be formed between the branched PEO molecules and the crosslinked network, which improves the mechanical strength and structural stability of the crosslinked system In addition, the molecular side chains of branched PEO still maintain excellent movement ability in the cross-linking network, which plays a role in plasticizing the cross-linking network, increasing the free volume and increasing the concentration of ether oxygen unit, thus promoting the CO 2 permeability of the cross-linking membrane Therefore, by simply forming branched PEO molecules in the original position of the hot crosslinked PEO network, the gas permeability and mechanical properties of PEO semi interpenetrating network separation membrane are improved at the same time This method has guiding significance for the design and processing of high-performance semi interpenetrating network separation membrane, and also extends the application range of semi interpenetrating network separation membrane Professor Shao Lu has been engaged in the research of membrane materials and membrane separation He has published more than 100 related papers in the international journals such as energy environmental science, Journal of membrane science, nature communications, matter, etc his articles have been selected into 3 ESI hot articles, 15 ESI high cited articles, more than 3900 SCI citations, h-index = 37.