Miao Yu, Professor
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
University of Buffalo

Na+-gated Nanochannel Membrane for Boosting Renewable Fuel Synthesis 

Abstract:  Sustainable energy, environment, water (H2O), and food, in a large extent, depends on acquiring/capturing/utilizing small molecules, such as H2O, ammonia (NH3), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ethanol, and liquid hydrocarbons, etc. Precisely designing stable, molecular-scale pores for sieving these molecules, either from the final product or during their production processes, could be an effective way of separating these molecules or promoting their production using compact and well-engineered systems.  Considering the very small sizes (0.26-1.0 nm) of these molecules and tiny size difference from their contaminants/by-products, it is a grand challenge to design these molecular-scale pores. My research interest is focused on rationally designing and preparing advanced nanoporous structures for precisely distinguishing molecules by size/shape differences, characterizing and understanding the nanostructures, and applying them for separation and catalysis. In this talk, I will first give an overview of my research work and then present our recent research work on Na+-gated nanochannel membrane and its application for boosting methanol and dimethyl ether (DME) synthesis.   

By-product H2O strongly inhibits the kinetics and thermodynamics of many important reactions for renewable fuel production, for example, CO2 hydrogenation to methanol. NaA zeolitic nanochannels were found to be water-conductive and gas impeding. As a result, H2O showed two to three orders of magnitude higher permeation rate than gases (as small as H2) at elevated temperatures (200-250 oC) and pressures (21-35 bar). This is surprising because the literature in the past 20 years reported comparable H2O and gas permeation rates for NaA zeolite membranes prepared from all over the world. Our extensive comparative experiments suggest this is because of the drastic improvement of our NaA membrane quality, and thus the intrinsic behavior of the NaA nanochannels can be revealed. The profound impact of these nanochannels on boosting reactions, which are thermodynamically and kinetically inhibited by by-product water, was demonstrated for methanol synthesis from CO2 hydrogenation, due to the emergency of developing sustainable and renewable fuels as well as mitigating CO2 related environmental issues. By generating a “dry” reaction environment using Na+-gated nanochannel membrane, greatly boosted DME synthesis from CO2 and H2 was also demonstrated. This important discovery of Na+-gated, water-conduction nanochannels may greatly improve energy efficiency of many important industrial processes and may also lead to novel applications utilizing special property of these water-conduction nanochannels.

Bio:  Dr. Miao Yu joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University at Buffalo (UB), the State University of New York, as an Empire Innovation Professor in January 2021. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) from August 2017 to January 2021. Before joining RPI, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of South Carolina (UofSC) between 2012 and 2017. He was an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder) from 2010 to 2012. He obtained BS (1998) and MS (2002) degrees from Tianjin University, China. He earned his Ph.D. degree from CU-Boulder in 2007, and subsequently worked in the same department as a postdoctoral researcher from 2007 to 2010. Dr. Yu has published 90 peer-reviewed papers; two of them were published in Science, and others in Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, JACS, Nano Letters, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, ACS Catalysis, Chemical Communications, etc. He is the recipient of 2015 NSF Career Award and 2022 AIChE Separations Division FRI/Yeoman Innovation Award.