Michele Galizia, a President’s Associates Presidential Professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, is leading a research team that recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy that will develop improved polymer membranes to advance molecular separation and related materials science.
“We currently separate chemicals, gases and liquids using a thermal-based distillation technology that is very expensive to operate and consumes the equivalent of eight GJ of electricity per person on the planet per year,” Galizia said. “So, our goal is to develop next-generation devices for large-scale gas separation using polymer membranes instead of distillation.”
“These membranes must exhibit adequate long-term stability of at least three years if we want to make these processes feasible and profitable,” he added.
Galizia is working alongside Alberto Striolo in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, and Marco Buongiorno Nardelli at the University of North Texas. Together they are focusing on fundamental science, using principles of chemistry and physics and taking inspiration from other fields to develop better materials.
“Our team is leveraging molecular simulations to select the monomers needed to make new polymer membranes,” Galizia said. “These new membranes would use 1,000 times less energy to separate mixtures than it would take to distill it.”
