(357d) The Spectacular Properties of Porous ?-Cyclodextrin Polymers

The unifying theme of the talk is the creation of novel environmentally benign materials and breakthrough technologies that solve challenges in environment protection and chemical industries.

One of these achievements is the invention of a breakthrough renewable porous polymers made of β-cyclodextrin (β-CD), an inexpensive macrocycle of glucose produced from cornstarch, which shows tremendous promise to remove micropollutants from water by means of adsorption. Previous adsorbent materials based on low surface areas β-CD polymers and high surface area activated carbons (ACs) have slow pollutant uptake (hours to days) and poor adsorbent performance with most organic micropollutants. The new high surface area β-CD materials near-instantly sequester hundreds of organic micropollutants at environmentally relevant concentrations with adsorption rate constants 15-200 times greater than high-end ACs and nonporous β-CD adsorbents. In addition, the polymers can be fully regenerated at ambient temperature, as compared with the poor and energy intensive regeneration of ACs. Other adsorbent materials were also developed, including a β-CD polymer that can remove perfluorohydrocabons (such as PFOA) from water to below our detection limits, and a β-CD-functionalized cotton fabric that can remove toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from air far superior (in speed and capacity) than commercial VOC-capturing fabrics. These discoveries led to creation of CycloPure, Inc. in June 2016, a start-up focused on the commercialization of such materials for water and air purification, and industrial separation applications.

Finally, the talk will briefly present environmentally benign technologies to improve the synthesis and manufacture of thermoplastic and thermoset composite materials which are used for wind-blade and automotive applications.