Sustainable Porous Liquids (SUPLI)

"SUPLI targets materials tailored for gas capture and separation, namely CO2, providing cheap, resilient and low-impact gas purification technologies, with the goal of providing relevant facilities retrofitting options at reduced initial investment. This project will develop new porous liquids, use dedicated testing equipment, and a high-throughput screening methodology to fast-track the design and discovery of promising materials.

We aim to develop fully biobased porous liquids (PLs) that are inexpensive, biodegradable and nontoxic, with high gas uptake capacities and selectivities, making them attractive for commercialisation. This project will combine for the first-time microporous solids (MPs) from biobased polymers with a non-volatile media based on sustainable liquid low melting mixtures (LMMs) as carriers in the formulation of PLs.

This proposal aims to change the complex synthesis processes or the use of metal centres in the formulation of porous liquids by combining low melting mixtures as liquids carriers with microporous polymer solids as porogens, all from sustainable, biobased, waste or commercial sources.

Our final aim is to produce a customisable sorbent, producing a PL that can be adapted to changing gas stream compositions. Promising materials will be investigated under realistic conditions of temperature, pressure and with complex gas mixtures.

The novelty of this work relies on two major pillars: functionalised sustainable porous liquids and a high-throughput screening method.

Fully biobased porous liquids will be developed as a sustainable, resilient and low carbon option for CO2 capture. The development of these materials will be fastracked by our unique universal screening method for gas uptake and separation. The fast screening of new solid and liquid materials for gas uptake with pure or complex and realistic gas mixtures, will allow streamlining and optimising research resources to produce performant porous liquids for gas uptake and separation."