(510l) Project Earth: Environmentally Applied Research Towards Hydrofluorocarbons

Project EARTH (Environmentally Applied Research Toward Hydrofluorocarbons) is a collaborative project with the University of Notre Dame, Texas A&M University, and Rutgers University focused on developing sustainable processes for the selective separation of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant mixtures. The team is initially focused on the separation of R-410A (azeotropic mixture containing 50 wt.% HFC-32 (CH₂F₂) and 50 wt.% HFC-125 (CHF₂CF₃). The project is exploring three separation approaches: (1) ionic liquids as entrainers for extractive distillation, (2) porous materials such as zeolites for adsorption-based separation, and (3) polymeric membrane separations. This poster will describe the team working on the NSF EFRI DCheM project and will specifically focus on the variety of physical property measurements, equation of state modeling, and lab-scale separation processes being used for the ionic liquids approach. This will include an overview of how we use specialized equipment including a Hiden Isochema IGA gravimetric balance, a Hiden Isochema XEMIS Integral Mass Balance, a Setaram Calorimeter, and a High-Pressure View Cell to build a comprehensive understanding of both pure HFC+IL and binary HFC+IL mixture systems.