Abstract
In competition with amines, ionic liquids (ILs) are known to interact strongly and reversibly with acid gases, making supported IL-membrane (SILMs) versatile materials for use in CO2 membrane separation applications. It is possible to finely tune SILMs properties for CO2 adsorption/separation by tailoring the characteristics of both the support (e.g., porosity, surface area, composition, etc.) and the ionic liquid (cations and anions). Up to now, nanoporous polymer supports have been favored for preparing SILMs, in spite of their relative instability during continuous separation processes in the presence of acidic gases. Recently, porous ceramic supports have been considered due to their excellent thermal and mechanical resistance. Most of the SILMs are prepared by impregnation/infiltration of IL in the pores of ceramic support which leads to the formation of composite membrane materials with either a physisorbed or mechanically trapped IL in the support. Despite their promising performance, such SILMs exhibit inherent limitations such as facile IL disarrangement, heterogeneous distribution, and limited stability upon ageing.In this Ph.D work, carried out in collaboration between the Institut Européen des Membranes (IEM) and the Institut Charles Gerhardt de Montpellier (ICGM), a new generation of SILMs has been developed in which ILs are confined within the pores of a mesoporous ceramic support by chemical grafting. The membranes are prepared in three steps:i) Synthesis and characterization of new ILs bearing a coupling function which allow the grafting on the surface of ceramic oxide supports and determination of the CO2 absorption capacity of the new ILs developed;ii) Elaboration and/or optimization of relevant synthesis protocols for grafting ILs on/in γ-alumina powders and physico-chemical characterizations of the hybrid materials;iii) Transfer of the optimized grafting protocols on commercial porous ceramic support with γ-alumina top-layer to produce Grafted Ionic Liquid Membranes (GILMs) and evaluate their performance for CO2 separation.An original research strategy, based on new ionic liquids and innovative membrane concepts have been addressed in this work, illustrating the contribution of a multi-step approach towards the development of membranes for CO2 separation.