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New technology enables carbon dioxide capture materials to \"breathe deeply\" Author/Source: Sinochem New Network Date: July 17, 2020 Clicks: 9 A few days ago, the team specializing in atmospheric environment and bioenergy at Tianjin University made significant progress in the field of \"carbon dioxide capture using membrane separation.\" They developed a new technique for producing mixed-matrix membranes, and the membranes created using this technique exhibit excellent capabilities for capturing carbon dioxide. The relevant findings were published as a cover article in the international journal \"Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology\". “The \"greenhouse effect\" is a major environmental issue that threatens human development today, and carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of this phenomenon. How to efficiently capture and utilize carbon dioxide emitted by humans is a focus of scientists' attention. “\"Membrane separation\" is an emerging carbon dioxide capture technology. As the name implies, this is a technology for separating carbon dioxide gas with the help of membrane materials, featuring high efficiency, energy savings, and simple operation. How to enable membrane materials to \"breathe deeply\" in order to improve gas separation efficiency is the key bottleneck in using membrane separation for carbon dioxide capture. The Atmospheric Environment and Bioenergy team at the School of Environment, Tianjin University, came up with an innovative approach that broke away from the conventional use of water and ethanol as solvents in the preparation of polyether-blocked polyamide membrane materials. They conducted repeated experiments to investigate the effect of different solvents on the gas separation performance of the membrane. Experimental results show that when N-methylpyrrolidone is used as the preparation solvent, the carbon nanotubes in the resulting membrane material are more evenly distributed, making the membrane \"more permeable\"; this effectively improves the gas separation efficiency and rate of the membrane material. The mixed matrix membrane prepared using this new technology exhibits a carbon dioxide separation performance that is close to the theoretical upper limit for such membrane materials. “New technologies provide new approaches for capturing carbon dioxide using membrane separation. ” Li Run, a member of the Atmospheric Environment and Bioenergy team at Tianjin University, said, “We hope that this technology can provide strong support for the treatment of flue gases in coal-fired power plants and chemical enterprises in the future, and play a significant role in areas such as controlling greenhouse gas emissions.” ”