Solvent Impregnated Polymers for Carbon Capture

Abstract

Microencapsulation of liquid solvents is a promising approach to utilizing viscous, corrosive, or kinetically limited solvents for large-scale gas separations in a practical manner. A major drawback of the technology is the difficulty of manufacturing capsules on an industrial scale. In this article, an alternative means of immobilizing liquid solvents inside high-surface-area polymers is proposed. A gel material containing 50 wt % solvent embedded inside a continuous polymer matrix is formed by a scalable one-pot method. The material may be shaped into thin films or particles with surface areas comparable to microcapsules, and gels containing concentrated K2CO3 solutions were stable through..