The overall objective of the project is to demonstrate that graphene membranes can be reproducibly produced for separation tasks and can be used for industrial applications under the aggressive conditions. These membranes have great potential to improve existing solutions and thus enable new products in the field of mass separation. Mass separation processes require a high energy input and at the same time can interfere with the synthesis processes themselves. More effective separation processes using graphene membranes thus enable better resource efficiency, which supports current political and social efforts to protect the climate. In the project, the separation of water, CO2 as well as H2S from various base gases such as synthesis gases or methane will be investigated using graphene structures on ceramic filters.
At Leibniz-IPHT, graphene coatings are developed and investigated using a two-step self-assembly process to optimize them for membrane applications. For the wet-chemical process, graphene flakes are suitably functionalized to obtain homogeneous and compressed monolayers from the suspension. The process can be repeated as often as required to obtain tailored graphene membranes, if necessary also by specific post-treatments.

The project is funded under the funding code 01LY2005B by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, funding measure KMU-innovativ in the funding area energy efficiency and climate protection, and financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.