The Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Carbon Dioxide Processes, directed by Joseph M. DeSimone, University of North Carolina, and Ruben G. Carbonell, North Carolina State University, supports a multidisciplinary research program to establish the fundamental understanding necessary to enable liquid and supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) to replace aqueous and organic solvents in a large number of key manufacturing and service processes. The Center also supports a range of educational activities including a novel program for undergraduate and graduate students in collaboration and innovation process skills and the development of K-12 education modules.
The Center is organized around four research thrust areas: interfacial and colloid science in compressible media; molecular thermodynamics and computer simulations; rate and transport processes; and chemistry and catalysis. Emphasis will be placed on development of an understanding of surface and interfacial phenomena involving liquid and supercritical CO2 with the goal of designing surfactants compatible with CO2, constructing theoretical intermolecular potentials to permit simulation of processes in CO2-based systems, understanding the kinetic, transport and rheological properties in these systems, and designing efficient chemical reaction pathways and chemical processes involving CO2 as a solvent. The Center is expected to have a significant impact on the development of environmentally benign CO2 as a solvent to replace aqueous and organic solvents in such industrially important processes as polymer synthesis, spin coating of thin films, textile dying, cleaning, and degreasing.
The 39-member team of investigators includes 10 faculty at the University of North Carolina, 13 at North Carolina State University, 5 at the University of Texas, Austin, 5 at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University (an historically black university) and one at the University of Venice (Italy). Five researchers from National Laboratories (Oak Ridge, PNNL, Los Alamos) will also participate. Technology transfer to industry will occur via interaction with the 16 industrial partners of the existing UNC/NCSU Kenan Center for the Utilization of CO2 in Manufacturing and the thirty partners of the Separations Research Program at UT-Austin. Approximately 13 postdoctoral associates, 31 graduate students, and 19 undergraduates will participate each year.
