1 feb 2012 - Aspasia grant dr. Kitty Nijmeijer (MESA+ group Membrane Science & Technology)

Dr. Kitty Nijmeijer of the MESA+ research group Membrane Science & Technology received an ASPASIA grant of the Dutch Science Foundation NWO. The ASPASIA grant aims to facilitate the promotion of female scientist to associate professor or professor. Kitty Nijmeijer will use the grant of 200.000 euro to further expand her research on polymer-molecular organic framework (MOF) architectures for gas separation. The idea is to develop so called mixed matrix membranes using a polymer as a matrix and different types of MOFs as selective additive to increase the membrane permeability and selectivity. A MOF consists of a metal ligand with organic linkers. Especially this structure reflects the strength of the use of MOFs for membrane applications compared to conventional nano-particles like zeolites etc. Due to the organic linkers, MOFs have the intrinsic ability to integrate with the matrix polymer. The organic linker of the MOF can be tuned such that its structure and physical properties fit to those of the matrix polymer. This overcomes the major disadvantage of existing mixed matrix membranes i.e. the occurrence of defects due to incompatibility issues between the polymer and the additive. At the same time, the metal ligand in the MOF can be chosen such that it has an increased affinity for the target molecule and as such significantly enhances the selectivity and the permeability of the membrane for a specific component. Initially, Kitty Nijmeijer will mainly focus on the separation of CO₂ from CH₄, an important high-pressure separation in the chemical industry. However, because the concept is very flexible and numerous combinations of metallic ligand and organic linkers can be envisaged, once explored, the concept can be easily extended to other applications.