Scalable Jet-Based Fabrication of PEI-Hydrogel Particles for CO_(2)Capture

The capture,regeneration,and conversion of CO_(2)from ambient air and flue gas streams are critical aspects of mitigating global warming.Solid sorbents for CO_(2)absorption are very promising as they have high mass transfer areas without energy input and reduce emissions and minimize corrosion as compared to liquid sorbents.However,precisely tunable solid CO_(2)sorbents are difficult to produce.Here,we demonstrate the high-throughput production of hydrogel-based CO_(2)-absorbing particles via liquid jetting.By wrapping a liquid jet consisting of an aqueous solution of cross-linkable branched polyethylenimine(PEI)with a layer of suspension containing hydrophobic silica nanoparticles,monodisperse droplets with a silica nanoparticle coating layer was formed in the air.A stable Pickering emulsion containing PEI droplets was obtained after these ejected droplets were collected in a heated oil bath.The droplets turn into mm-sized particles after thermal curing in the bath.The diameter,PEI content,and silica content of the particles were systematically varied,and their CO_(2)absorption was measured as a function of time.Steam regeneration of the particles enabled cyclic testing,revealing a CO_(2)absorption capacity of 6.5±0.5 mol kg^(−1)solid PEI in pure CO_(2)environments and 0.7±0.3 mol kg^(−1)solid PEI for direct air capture.Several thousands of particles were produced per second at a rate of around 0.5 kg per hour,with a single nozzle.This process can be further scaled by parallelization.The complete toolbox for the design,fabrication,testing,and regeneration of functional hydrogel particles provides a powerful route toward novel solid sorbents for regenerative CO_(2)capture.

Microalgae wet extraction using N-ethyl butylamine for fatty acid production

Microalgae are considered a promising feedstock for the production of food ingredients, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products and biofuels.The energy intensity of drying and cell breaking of algae and solvent recovery afterwards hindered the route of algae biorefinery. In this work the influences of freeze drying and cell breaking to the extraction efficiency of crude lipid yield and fatty acid yield were investigated. Results showed that drying and cell breaking are not necessary for N-ethyl butylamine extraction, because good yields were obtained without. Crude lipid yield and fatty acid yield using N-ethyl butylamine were comparable with Bligh & Dyer extraction, making N-ethyl butylamine a candidate for further development of an energy efficient lipid extraction technology for non-broken microalgae.