Scalable nanomaterials & process development for CO$_2$ capture and e-waste treatment

Abstract

In regards to technological advances thought the globe, there are two major challenges globally causing tremendous impact in environment. First is the CO2 emission to atmosphere and second being release of pollutants in bodies of water. With tremendous amount of effort and research being done to tackle the two global issues, many feasible solutions for each problem were made through development of functional and efficient absorbents. However

due to the scale of production rate of global pollutants, developed absorbent must meet the scale of emitting pollutants in terms of economics and raw materials. To fit the scale of pollutant, covalent organic network polymers were developed and studied for its scalability. Porous organic polymers are synthesized from only organic monomers, which have advantages of chemical stability, cost efficiency, structural tunability and porosity. In this thesis, porous covalent organic network polymers were first synthesized in small scale to test for its feasibility in each CO2 capture application and precious metal capture in water application. Once the functionality was confirmed, they were studied for their synthesizability in large scale reactors. Previously, when porous organic polymers were scaled up, there was a significant loss in functionality and porosity. Hence, in this thesis we evaluate crucial factors that influences the loss of porosity in scale up synthesis of covalent organic polymers Furthermore, we optimize reaction condition of covalent organic polymers to scale up for pilot plant scale with minimal loss in functionality.Chapter 2 introduces scalable nanoparticle, lithium silicate with TiO2 nanotubes and covalent organic polymer (COP) 109 for high and low temperature CO2 capture. Due to the difficulties and hindering factors in scale up of COP 109 such as sudden gelation of product, various methods of synthesis were applied, where the use of turbulent reactor set up and decomposition of DMSO was found to be a suitable method. Two methods were able to prevent sudden gelation of COP 109 during synthesis while maintaining their functional properties and porosities in large scale reactor. All scaled up materials were tested for its specific properties and functionalities in application. Chapter 3 introduces COP 180 for gold capture in e-waste solution where it was well studied for its selective binding with record high uptake of gold. However

COP 180 also faced difficulties in the past in large scale synthesis as porosity was lost during the process. Through identification of variables affecting reaction condition and optimization of processes, 50L scale bench reactor was designed and modified to yield a large batch of COP 180 synthesis in batch reactor condition. Through optimization and major changes in atmospheric condition, loss in gold uptake capacity and porosity were minimized.