Robust membrane supporting structures
AssigneeMemzyme, LLC
InventorsCaroline Rempe, Ying-Bing Jiang, Yongqian Gao, Jimin Guo
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Disclosed are methods of preparing a porous ceramic support for an ultra-thin enzyme-assisted membrane, and a new membrane that can be used for gas filtration purposes to remove/separate carbon dioxide or other gases from a gas mixture such as those from power production or enhanced oil recovery or fuel production or air, and recycle/collect/utilize carbon dioxide. In some embodiments, a method may include blocking the pores of a porous substrate with a removable medium, and polishing the surface, coating a silica sol-gel solution onto the support, and removing the blocking medium and sol-gel surfactant to leave a well-confined porous structure.
Claims10
A method of fabricating a porous support for use as CO2 capturing membranes, comprising:
- providing a porous support;
- filling pores of the porous support with a second material, wherein the second material is softer than the porous support, and wherein the second material can be selectively removed from the porous support;
- polishing a surface of the porous support that is filled with the second material;
- coating a layer of sol-gel solution on the top surface of the porous support, wherein the sol-gel comprises surfactant, and the thickness of the layer is less than 1 micron;
- allowing the sol-gel solution to become solidified;
- removing the surfactant from the solidified sol-gel solution to generate nanopores, thereby forming a nanoporous layer on top of the porous support, wherein the size of the nanopores is determined by the molecular dimension of the surfactant;
- and
- before or after or at the same time of removing the surfactant, removing the second material from the porous support to recover a porous feature of the porous support, thereby forming a structure with a thin nanoporous layer standing on the top of the porous support without having the nanoporous layer penetrating into the pores of the porous support.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.