SBIR Phase I: Carbide-derived Carbon Adsorbents for Ammonia Filtration

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to improve respiratory protection against ammonia by using novel carbide-derived carbons (CDCs). The outcome of this project will improve the safety and health for industrial workers, firefighters, and first responders that encounter ammonia in industrial settings and emergency situations. Current respiratory protection gas masks attempt to prevent users from breathing ammonia by trapping the toxic gas on an adsorbent material. Adsorbents on the market provide limited protection time against ammonia due to poor attractive forces between the adsorbent and ammonia. CDCs overcome these limitations through a new synthesis procedure that creates ammonia-specific active sites within its structure to bind and trap ammonia. Research on these materials will unlock the tools and methods necessary to tailor these adsorbents to other toxic gases. The proposed R&D activities address a commercial opportunity within the respiratory protection market estimated to be a $6 billion market globally, and $2.4 billion market in the U.S. The technical objectives in this Phase I research project are to synthesize CDCs that can be easily integrated within a filter cartridge and to provide an order of magnitude increase in protection time against ammonia compared to current materials. CDCs have promising performance and an enormous amount of research activity has been devoted to the synthesis and characterization of CDCs for adsorptive applications. However, to date, no commercial adsorptive applications of these materials exist. This situation exists in part because insufficient attention has been paid to the integration of selective gas adsorption sites, control of particle size, and hydrothermal stability, all of which are key technical hurdles that will be addressed in this project. This goal will be accomplished by synthesizing and testing granular CDCs for selective adsorption of ammonia from air, integrating further ammonia-specific active sites via post-synthesis modification techniques, and evaluating hydrodynamic and thermal stability of CDCs through cyclical stability testing methods. The results from this project will significantly further our understanding of CDCs in terms of large particle size synthesis, long term stability, and tailored active sites for gas capture. The anticipated results would significantly further CDCs for ammonia filtration and other commercial separations applications.