Project Details
Projekt
Development of Micro/mesoporous spherical adsorbents for Adsorption of various volatile anesthetics
Subject Area
Chemical and Thermal Process Engineering
Term
from 2011 to 2018
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 206051857
The adsorption of volatile anesthetics on trace levels (< 1 ppm) is highly interesting for technical applications as well as for academic research. Especially challenging for these trace levels is the lack of real adsorption data, while practically adsorption isotherms for higher concentrations (mostly several hundred ppm) are linear extrapolated towards their point of origin to gather data. Therefore, the selection or synthesis of an adsorbent matching these requirements is a particular challenge.During the second founding period carbon based adsorbents as well as large spherical PMO particles with a hierarchical pore structure were synthesized on the basis of porous micro glass beads for the first time. Especially the PMO materials exhibited a very high adsorption capacity for hexanal. First adsorption experiments of volatile anesthetics (isoflurane) directed the material design towards large spherical hydrophobic and hierarchical micro/mesoporous particles (carbon or PMO) for significant process intensification.The most important target for the third founding period of this joint project will be the synthesis of spherical porous glass with flexible properties in the existing mini plant fluidized bed reactor. To insert the advantageous features of core shell particles into the existing system the principle of ion exchange induced phase separation will be applied. To rise particle sizes in technically relevant range the principle of ionotropic gelation will be combined with sodium borosilicate glass for the first time. Subsequently, these shaped bodies will be transformed into ordered micro/mesoporous hierarchically structured organosilica or carbon beads. Furthermore, the new route of ionotropic gelation will be utilized for the direct synthesis of well-ordered microporous organosilica or carbon beads. In the last step, the innovative materials will be tested in several adsorption experiments. The three most common volatile anesthetics (isoflurane, desflurane, sevoflurane) will be applied. Additionally, three alkyl ethers and one alkane will be tested to distinguish between the effects of the halogen atoms and the influence of the ether bridge. Air filter systems are in the focus of this project. Therefore, only trace level concentrations of the three fluranes in an air/nitrogen mixture will be studied.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
