ASPAir · Accelerated Synthesis of Nanoporous Photocatalysts for Indoor Air Purification
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-09-01 → 2018-08-31
- EU contribution
- €175,420
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Accelerated Synthesis of Nanoporous Photocatalysts for Indoor Air Purification
The primary objective of the Marie Curie Fellowship was to enhance the scientific knowledge and personal development of the researcher by joining the LSMO team at EPFL Valais, and developing a project based on the design and synthesis of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs), for their use in indoor air purification. Perhaps surprisingly, indoor air contains a greater number of Volatile Organic Carbons (VOCs), and at concentrations higher than outdoor air. Although the concentrations of these compounds are in the parts per billion (ppb) range, and with people spending up to 80% of their time indoors, continued exposure to VOCs, many of which are mutagenic or carcinogenic, can lead to ill health. Commercial photocatalytic air purifiers utilise UV light and titanium dioxide to purify air, however the effectiveness of this can be questioned, due to the challenge in measuring such low concentrations of pollutants; it could be that instead of destroying the pollutant, the air purifier is simply transforming one pollutant to another. There is therefore an excellent opportunity to improve this technology by fabricating next generation air purification photocatalysts. The project directly addresses this challenge through the investigation of next-generation nanoporous materials, namely, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs consist of metal ions or clusters coordinated to multidentate organic ligands to form one-, two-, or three-dimensional porous structures, depending on the strategic choice of building blocks, and the preferred coordination geometry of the metal centres. Following rapid progress in the field over the past decade, MOFs are now widely regarded as having exceptional promise across a range of technological areas. ` The project delivered a number of novel MOFs, and protocols were developed for activating (removing guest molecules from the pores of high surface area MOFs) and monitoring the degradation of organic pollutants under UV and visible light.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The project ASPAir intends to go beyond the state-of-the-art in the fields of chemistry and materials science, by accelerating the discovery of a new class of photoresponsive high surface area metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and MOF-based composites with the essential application of improving indoor air quality by degradating volatile organic carbons (VOCs) such as acetone, ethanol, benzene, etc. This approach will take advantage of the applicant's expertise in photocatalysis with the world-class expertise of the host institution in MOF synthesis and charactersation, chromophore synthesis and molecular simulations. High-throughput automated microwave heating technology will be employed to screen hundreds of reaction conditions in order to isolate porous MOFs based on selected conducting chromophores and high valence and/or transition metal centres. In addition, porous and visible light active MOF crystals will be combined with nanoparticles based on reducing metal centres facilitating electric contact to generate photoresponsive MOF@Nanoparticle composites. Both MOFs and MOF based composites are going to be characterised using a plethora of techniques currently available within the host institution; their hydrolytic stability will be tested under different relative humidities replicating typical conditions in residential homes. The materials will be loaded with controlled concentrations of VOCs in order to check their stability and assess the strength of interactions occurring between the guest VOCs and host materials. Both MOFs and MOF based composites will be tested for the photocatalytic degradation of VOCs and their short and long-term photocatlytic effectiveness will be evaluated by degrading multiple VOCs simultaneously over long periods of time mimicking realistic indoor air conditions. Whilst being a high-risk project, the impact of the discovery of next generation materials with superior photocatalytic performances will be high.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE · LausanneCoordinatorSwitzerland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union