(A) study on fiber sorbent with hierarchical porosity for volatile organic compound capture

Abstract

VOC control now has become one of the standardized regulations for all industries that directly or indirectly involved with chemical processing. The current VOC emission control relies on either highly energy-intensive thermal condensation of emissions or packed bed columns that induces high-pressure drop across the module, resulting in additional energy input for the gas driving force, and inefficient sorption across the entire module. In this study, an intrinsically microporous polymer (PIM-1) is used to produce monolithic sorbents with a hierarchal meso/microporous structure via a dry-jet wet-quench spinning process. The produced fibers demonstrated a negligible pressure drop across the 4-inch module, with the potential to utilize the high sorption amount and fast kinetics in VOC capture even at ultra-dilute feed streams with ~1000 ppm VOC.