Anita Alni
The rise of atmospheric CO2 levels is causing serious impact on the environment. Increase in the sea level due to the melt of polar ice has caused floods in many parts of the world. On the contrary, consumption of hydrocarbon fuel as well as many other carbon compounds are rising as the world progress towards industrialization. If reduced, CO2 can be a valuable source of hydrocarbon, hence offer a close-loop waste to consumption circle that might undertake the climate change issue in the long run. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, CO2 conversion processes will reduce our dependency on fossil fuels for chemical synthesis. In this proposal we would like to study the CO2 fixation on catalytic membrane that lead to conversion of CO2 into valuable hydrocarbon materials. Membrane will be fabricated from CO2 imprinted polymers to increase its selectivity towards CO2 as compared to other gas such as N2, SO2, and NOx. Silver nanoparticles will be coated on the membrane that serves as catalyst in the reduction reaction of CO2. The coated membrane will be characterized by SEM before and after fixation of CO2. The imprinted polymers will be synthesized based on suspension polymerization method and the product will be characterized by FTIR, N2 absorption study and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Membrane will be suspended in acetonitrile as solvent and the reaction mixture will be characterized by gas chromatography to identify the reaction products. This projects will involve two graduate students working on different parameters to optimize the reaction conditions. We sought for Rp. 50 000 000 for this projects which will be used to buy chemicals and renumeration for the graduate students.