Congratulations to Bo Wang of the Dutta group for being a recipient of a Presidential Fellowship. These fellowships are awarded to graduate students who are entering the final phase of their dissertation research or terminal degree project. The fellows are given financial support so that they may devote one year of full-time study to the completion of their dissertation or terminal degree project, uninterrupted by other duties.

 

With this Fellowship, Bo will be working with Zeolite membranes. Currently, zeolite membranes are expensive to synthesis and have low separation performance reproducibility. Bo’s research is focused on an innovative polymer supported bendable zeolite membrane, which addresses the high cost and low reproducibility issues of current zeolite membranes. Also, highly reproducible CO2/N2 separation performance was obtained with and without bending to a 1 inch curve.

 

Some advantages of bendable zeolite membranes are:

 

1. Bendability (mechanically stable): CO2/N2 separation performance was kept after bending the membrane to a 1 inch diameter curve.

 

2. Low fabrication cost: employing inexpensive polymer supports and using a roller assembly in fabrication significantly decreases the cost (90% lower than current zeolite membranes).

 

3. Scale-up: This zeolite membrane has potential for industrial scale production and applications.

 

In the coming year of the fellowship period, Bo’s focus will be on the development of a direct demonstration of continuous roll-to-roll fabrication method for bendable zeolite membranes, applying bendable zeolite membranes to different applications other than CO2/N2 (such as CO2/CH4 and pervaporation), investigating the effect of humidity on separation performance of zeolite membranes, and studying the correlation between the defect amount and separation performance of membranes.