(453c) Porous Boron Nitride - Moving up the Scale for Use in Industrial Molecular Separations
AIChE Annual Meeting
2020
2020 Virtual AIChE Annual Meeting
Separations Division
Adsorbent Materials
Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - 8:30am to 8:45am
Recently, our group developed a new method to produce porous BN with enhanced surface area, tuneable porosity3 and promising liquid and gas separations performance. To further advance the use of porous BN, we must investigate its chemical stability. In fact, preliminary tests in our group pointed to the instability of the material in presence of water4. Considering this aspect, we functionalised the surface of porous BN via silanisation to enhance hydrophobicity and resistance to moisture. The samples were characterised before and after functionalisation using FTIR, XRD, XPS, TGA and SEM. The changes in hydrophobicity were monitored using water vapour sorption and contact angle measurements. In addition, the porosity of the material was probed before and after exposure to moisture and liquid water with nitrogen sorption. The results point to the efficiency of the approach to produce moisture-resistant BN-based adsorbents.
In parallel, we also investigated the formation mechanism of porous BN via the comprehensive characterisation of intermediates at different synthesis temperatures using a combination of analytical and spectroscopic tools, including X-ray absorption spectroscopy. The results of this study not only provide valuable insight on how to tune better the porosity of the material, but also on how to improve the hydrolytic stability discussed above. Therefore, this research paves the way for scaling up the synthesis of porous BN towards industrial applications.
1. Sholl, D. S.; Lively, R. P., Seven chemical separations to change the world. Nature 2016, 532 (7600), 435-437.
2. Jiang, X.-F.; Weng, Q.; Wang, X.-B.; Li, X.; Zhang, J.; Golberg, D.; Bando, Y., Recent Progress on Fabrications and Applications of Boron Nitride Nanomaterials: A Review. Journal of Materials Science & Technology 2015, 31 (6), 589-598.
3. Marchesini, S.; McGilvery, C. M.; Bailey, J.; Petit, C., Template-Free Synthesis of Highly Porous Boron Nitride: Insights into Pore Network Design and Impact on Gas Sorption. ACS Nano 2017, 11 (10), 10003-10011.
4. Shankar, R.; Marchesini, S.; Petit, C., Enhanced Hydrolytic Stability of Porous Boron Nitride via the Control of Crystallinity, Porosity, and Chemical Composition. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 2019, 123 (7), 4282-4290.