Molecular Design of High CO2 Reactivity and Low Viscosity Ionic Liquids for CO2 Separative Facilitated Transport Membranes

A Otani and Y Zhang and T Matsuki and E Kamio and H Matsuyama and EJ Maginn, INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RESEARCH, 55, 2821-2830 (2016).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.6b00188

The viscosities of ionic liquids (ILs) that chemically react with CO, and contain an aprotic heterocyclic anion (AHA) change very little after CO, absorption, whereas the viscosities of other kinds of reactive ILs increase dramatically after CO, absorption. This unique property has overcome a major problem with IL-based facilitated transport membranes (FTMs), namely,-the low CO2 diffusivity caused by the extremely high liquid viscosity. This problem is especially severe at low temperature. In our preliminary experiments, the AHA IL tetrabutylphosphoniuni 2= cyanopyrrolide (P-44442-CNpyrr) was studied in a FTM and it exhibited- good CO, permeability and CO2/N-2 selectivity. P-4444 2-CNpyrr does not react as strongly with CO, as other reactive ILs, however, and its viscosity is still somewhat high. The CO2. separation performance of an IL-based FTM is expected to be better if a lower viscosity IL is used that binds CO2 more strongly. In this work, several AHA ILs were studied and their CO2 reactivity and viscosity were calculated using molecular simulation. The IL triethyl(methoxymethyl)phosphonium pyrrolide (P-222(lol)pyrr) was predicted to have the highest reactivity and the lowest viscosity of the investigatedAFIA as, suggesting that its use in a FTM will lead to much higher CO2 permeability than previously repotted IL-FTM systems-such as P-4444 2-CNpyrr).