Carbon dioxide emissions are rising throughout the world as industrialization increases, contributing to global warming. Our goal is to reduce carbon dioxide through filtering flue gas post-combustion using membranes, which could be cheaper and more efficient than present solutions. This has the advantage of being readily adapted to existing plants, but the carbon dioxide is much diluted in a huge volume of primarily nitrogen gas, making separation much more difficult and energy-intensive. 

Two promising types of membranes are ionic liquid membranes and composite polymeric membranes. Polymer membranes are well-suited to gas separation because of their adaptable chemistry and ease processing, but they come with issues such as aging and plasticization. This project focuses on (1) ionic liquid stuff, and (2) the effects of selective layer thickness and aging on plasticization.