Research

The Separation Challenge

Separation processes currently use around 14 % of the USA energy consumption annually. This is necessary to obtain pure materials from natural resources in industry. We aim to reduce the energy and time costs of some separations and create new separations not previously possible. Our research team broadly aims at using porous materials to separate target molecules or ions. For this, we have utilised polymers, polymer-based materials and permanently porous nanomaterials to create designer composites.
These composites are then used in our research fields:

• Fundamental membrane research (anti-ageing membranes, chemically and thermally resistant membranes)
• Gas separations (direct air CO2 capture, oxygen capture and release, porous liquids)
• Liquid separations (desalination, lithium extraction, liquid organic hydrogen carrier separations)
• Energy applications (lithium sulfur battery design)
• Biological applications (thermally tolerant drug encapsualtion, bioremediation)
  
• Upscaling (flow chemistry, systems integration)

Our diverse team have backgrounds in chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computational simulation. Please see our Team page for specific examples. Graduated students and collaborators have gone down a variety of paths, please see the Alumni page.

Fundamental Membrane Research

We have discovered an unprecedented interaction between porous additives and polymer membranes that gives remarkable properties. This includes the control over physical ageing of membranes to deliver favourable gas transport properties over time, enhanced mechanical strength and resistance to plasticisation.

Read more on anti-ageing composite membranes.

Gas Separations
Advanced materials are able to behave in unique ways that allow for difficult separations - where the target molecule is in low concentrations, or difficult to separate from other species in mixtures.

We also work on novel release techniques, namely Magnetic Induction Swing Adsorption (MISA) that uses magnetic heating to release gases, rather than conventional heating or a vacuum.

Read more on MISA release of oxygen.
Read more on gas separation.

Liquid Separations
Liquid separations pose unique challenges compared to gas separations, with target ions of sub-nanometre size differences being separated by combination of size and energy sieving.

Lithium and magnesium differ in size by only a few Angstroms, but are able to be separated with rectifying Metal-organic Framework (MOF) nanochannels.

Liquid organic hydrogen carrier pairs, such as benzene-cyclohexane or toluene-methylcyclohexane, must be selectively separated to distinguish 'fresh' and 'depleted' hydrogen carriers.

Read more on ion separation.
Read more on liquid organic hydrogen carrier separations.

Energy Applications
Control of porosity in concert with electrochemical properties leads to remarkable cathodes and separators within supercapacitors and batteries.

Specialised formulations of mixed materials for lithium battery separators have allowed for high-capacity, high endurance batteries.

Read  more on lithium-sulfur batteries.

Biological applications
While remarkably selective and rapid, enzymes suffer in non-biological environments. Metal-organic frameworks can encapsulate enzymes to resist degradation with a hard shell.

We have recently shown that organophosphate degrading enzyme is stabilised within a MOF shell, and is able to repeatedly decompose phosphate pollutants.

Read more on the encapsulation of enzymes

Upscaling
The viability of any of these discoveries is dependent on the ability to produce the advanced material efficiently and at meaningful scales.

We have developed continuous flow chemistry means that have shown remarkable abilities in this area, and can be used to produce materials not otherwise easily produced.

Read more on flow synthesis of Metal-Organic Framework composites.