(578c) Encapsulation of Nanoscale Hybrid Materials for Innovative CO2 capture: NOHMs and MOFs

The ever-increasing anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are likely to remain since fossil energy will continue to play an important role in our energy mix in the foreseeable future. Thus, there is an urgent need for efficient carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies. In terms of CO₂ capture, there have been significant advancements in materials science and engineering and a number of novel nanoscale hybrid materials such as liquid-like Nanoparticle Organic Hybrid Materials (NOHMs) and Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) have been developed. While their CO₂ capture capacity and selectivity are promising, the application of NOHMs and MOFs in gas separation is not straightforward due to their high viscosity and nanoscale size, respectively. Recently, a new solvent delivery method via encapsulation has been proposed to provide large interfacial area for CO₂ capture for these viscous fluids. This study showed that NOHMs and other solvents with high viscosity can be successfully encapsulated inside UV-curing polymeric shell which is gas permeable. The CO₂ capture rate of the encapsulated solvents were drastically improved compared to bulk fluid. By tuning the fluid flow rates during encapsulated, the thickness of the shell can be controlled and, in some cases, multi core capsules were produced further increasing the interfacial area. This encapsulation technique was also employed to deliver MOFs by replacing the inner fluid with MOFs precursor solutions and in-situ synthesizing MOFs within the droplet.