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Elaboration of sustainable activated carbons
The aim of this project is to explore the properties of a sustainable waste-sourced activated carbon by tailoring its microstructure to fit an application in waste-heat utilization for the next generation of heat pumps.
Keywords: Activated carbons, porous materials, microstructure, sustainability, energy efficiency.
The tailorability of activated carbon properties, be it their microstructure (density, porosity, interconnectivity) or their chemistry (atomic composition, surface state), makes them an exciting class of materials for a wide range of applications with environmental aims. However, current state-of-the-art carbons are typically synthesized from precursors emerging from the petroleum industry.
This lack of adequacy between their elaboration process and their expected use is flawing their development – it also means a relatively high cost per gram of final material. The aim of this project is to develop an activated car-bon from a raw material that is cur-rently considered an undesired waste. Plenty of examples of this kind of physico-chemical transformations exist in the literature[5]–[9] although the results more than often do not meet expectations.
The tailorability of activated carbon properties, be it their microstructure (density, porosity, interconnectivity) or their chemistry (atomic composition, surface state), makes them an exciting class of materials for a wide range of applications with environmental aims. However, current state-of-the-art carbons are typically synthesized from precursors emerging from the petroleum industry. This lack of adequacy between their elaboration process and their expected use is flawing their development – it also means a relatively high cost per gram of final material. The aim of this project is to develop an activated car-bon from a raw material that is cur-rently considered an undesired waste. Plenty of examples of this kind of physico-chemical transformations exist in the literature[5]–[9] although the results more than often do not meet expectations.
The aim of this project is to develop a new class of activated carbons for a cleaner energy collection in waste-heat driven devices. This objective can be reached by improving the sustainability of said carbons by exchanging petroleum-based resins with spent coffee grounds, an abundant raw material. The over-arching objective is to reduce the ecological impact of spent coffee grounds (over 150000 tons for Swit-zerland alone[10]) by upcycling them into game-changing sorbents for the next generation of heat pumps. The resulting materials have the prerequisite of being competitive with current technologies. This work is targeted for someone with a pronounced taste for lab work and characterization and is divided as follows:
• Elaboration of granulated and monolithic activated carbons through high temperature thermal treatments and characterization
• Characterization of the resulting materials and their microstructure by Thermal Conductivity, Dy-namic Vapor Sorption, X-Ray Diffraction, Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide Sorption, Helium Pyc-nometry, Scanning Electron Microscopy.
• Calculation and numerical optimization of the elaboration process to accommodate for the yield/performance of the resulting materials as well as for its sustainability and environmental impact.
The aim of this project is to develop a new class of activated carbons for a cleaner energy collection in waste-heat driven devices. This objective can be reached by improving the sustainability of said carbons by exchanging petroleum-based resins with spent coffee grounds, an abundant raw material. The over-arching objective is to reduce the ecological impact of spent coffee grounds (over 150000 tons for Swit-zerland alone[10]) by upcycling them into game-changing sorbents for the next generation of heat pumps. The resulting materials have the prerequisite of being competitive with current technologies. This work is targeted for someone with a pronounced taste for lab work and characterization and is divided as follows: • Elaboration of granulated and monolithic activated carbons through high temperature thermal treatments and characterization • Characterization of the resulting materials and their microstructure by Thermal Conductivity, Dy-namic Vapor Sorption, X-Ray Diffraction, Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide Sorption, Helium Pyc-nometry, Scanning Electron Microscopy. • Calculation and numerical optimization of the elaboration process to accommodate for the yield/performance of the resulting materials as well as for its sustainability and environmental impact.