Gas separations are an important and integral part of the solution to our society’s energy needs and environmental issues. Current technologies for carbon capture, air separation, and hydrocarbon separations are energy intensive and heavily rely on thermal energy. Advanced materials hold the key to energy-efficient gas separations. Sorbents and membranes are two types of commonly used materials for gas separations. The key challenges for sorbent materials are high capacity, high selectivity, chemical stability, and facile release; the main issues for membrane materials are to achieve high permeance and high selectivity simultaneously along with stable performance. Porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks, covalent organic frameworks, and porous organic polymers provide new opportunities for the design and synthesis of a porous sorbent for a specific gas separation. Porous liquids have also recently emerged as a new type of separation media. Membranes based on polymers, ionic liquids, framework materials, or a mixed matrix offer exciting potential to overcome the Robeson’s upper bound.

This symposium is aimed at bringing together researchers in materials synthesis, gas separations, sorbent development, and membrane fabrication to highlight recent progresses and discuss challenges and opportunities in the materials aspect of carbon capture and other important gas separations.

absorbent adsorption surface chemistry