Overview

This webinar celebrates the award of the 2025 Underwood Medal to Professor Stefano Brandani.

Novel nanoporous materials are being discovered and synthesised at an ever-increasing rate. These materials can be tailored to reduce energy consumption in several separations processes and here we will primarily focus on carbon capture applications. When originally prepared at lab scale, only batches of 50-100 mg are available and it is therefore a key challenge to obtain key parameters rapidly in order to evaluate the novel materials for a specific gas separation.

In our laboratory we have developed a sequence that starts with the equilibrium and kinetic information using less than 50 mg of powder material. Materials that look promising are then tested for stability in both powder and pelletised from. For materials that pass these initial tests, the next stage is that of small adsorption columns with less than 10 gr, operated either as breakthrough systems (for thermal swing processes) or under rapid pressure cycling conditions (for pressure swing adsorption processes). At this stage materials may also be tested in the form of monoliths or other structured adsorbents required for high throughput processes.

If time allows an overview of interesting kinetic results will be discussed to include systems with structural change upon adsorption of CO2 and shell core structures in pelletised materials.

Speaker

Stefano Brandani, Chair of Chemical Engineering, University of Edinburgh

Stefano is the Chair of Chemical Engineering at the University of Edinburgh since 2007, having previously been Professor of Chemical Engineering at University College London. His main research interests are the fundamentals of adsorption and adsorption processes; he has over 200 publications (Google Scholar h-i 54; i10-i 164) addressing the simulation of adsorption processes and experimental measurement of adsorption equilibrium and kinetics for rapid ranking of novel adsorbents. Stefano is the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize, a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award, and the 2025 Underwood medal from the Institution of Chemical Engineers (UK). 

The material presented at this event has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions are the presenter's own and do not necessarily represent those of IChemE or the Fluid Separations Special Interest Group. The information is given in good faith but without any liability on the part of IChemE.

Time

14:00–15:00 GMT.

Software

The presentation will be delivered via Microsoft Teams. We recommend downloading the app from the Microsoft website, rather than using the web portal.