(69e) Manufacturing Advanced Structured Contactors with Integrated Heat Management Capabilities

The rapid increase in global industrialization necessitates technology shifts in energy production, manufacturing, and carbon management techniques. Large energy costs in refineries, power plants, and manufacturing facilities using traditional separation techniques are currently a major opportunity for innovation. Approximately 10-15% of global energy use can be attributed to separation processes, with the vast majority of separations being “thermal” in nature (e.g., distillation). Significant energy and cost savings can be realized using advanced separation techniques such as membranes and sorbents. One of the major barriers to acceptance of these techniques remains linking engineering materials to actual processes that are effective in the presence of aggressive industrial feeds.

The creation of robust materials-enabled advanced separators and their manufacturing into low-cost, energy-efficient devices to meet this global challenge will be the focus of the talk. Engineering novel materials—such as solid-supported amines, metal-organic frameworks, and polymers of intrinsic microporosity—into structured contactor adsorption devices shows promise for emerging separation applications. These include olefin/paraffin separation, carbon capture, and air purification. Structured sorbent contactors can help manage kinetic and engineering factors associated with the separation, including pressure drop, sorption enthalpy effects, and external heat integration (for temperature swing adsorption). Monoliths, fiber sorbents, and 3D printed materials will be discussed as the three main classes of existing or emerging structured sorbent contactors. Recent developments in their manufacture; advantages and disadvantages of each structure relative to each other and to pellet packed beds; recent developments in system modeling; and finally, critical needs in this area of research will all be discussed.