The effect of the morphology and content of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) on the physicochemical, mechanical, and gas transport properties of the polyurethane (PU) mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) with respect to CO₂ recovery from CH₄, O₂, and N₂ was studied. The MMMs based on PU with spherical and rod-shaped ZnO-NPs at various loadings, namely, 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 1, and 2 wt. %, were prepared with membrane density control and studied using AFM, wettability measurements, surface free energy calculation, gas separation and mechanical testing. To evaluate the resistance of the ZnO-NPs to agglomeration in the polymer solutions, zeta potential was determined. The ZnO-NPs with average cross sectional size of 30 nm were obtained by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) from elemental high-purity zinc in a zinc-oxygen-hydrogen plasma-forming gas mixture. It was established that the spherical ZnO-NPs are promising to improve the gas performance of PU-based MMMs for CO₂ recovery from natural gas, while the rod-shaped NPs better demonstrate their potential in capturing CO₂ in flue gases.

The present study continues the development and enhancement of a highly efficient unique hybrid technique—membrane-assisted gas absorption in designing the separation unit, which provides the improvement in mass-transfer of a target component during the ammonia capture process from a process loop of the Haber–Bosch technological route. In order to minimize the absorbent volume to membrane area ratio, the special separation cell was designed based on a combination of two types of hollow fiber membranes, dense gas separation membrane and porous pervaporation membrane. The separation performance tests were implemented under two sets of conditions, sweeping the bore (permeate) side of a cell with helium and hydrogen-nitrogen mix. For both cases, the membrane-assisted gas absorption cell demonstrated high separation efficiency, and the ammonia concentration in the permeate was never lower than 81 mol%; meanwhile, under the hydrogen-nitrogen bore sweep conditions, the ammonia concentration in the permeate reached 97.5 mol% in a single-step process. Nevertheless, there is a product purity–recovery rate trade-off, which is a typical issue for separation processes.

Copper (I, II) oxide powders were tested for glycerol conversion to lactic acid under alkaline conditions. Fresh and spent catalysts were characterized using powder X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy/Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy, the BET-nitrogen adsorption method and FTIR spectroscopy. In all cases, an almost complete in situ reduction of Cu (I, II) oxides into metallic Cu was observed, even after one catalytic run. Moreover, all the samples of spent catalysts showed similar catalytic activity regardless of their initial form and particle size. Commercial copper powders, prepared copper powders and in situ reduced copper catalysts were tested under the same conditions to compare their catalytic activity. It was shown that the in situ reduced copper catalyst had similar activity to the specially prepared copper powders and much higher activity compared to the commercial copper powders. The in situ reduced copper catalyst exhibited rather high stability. The glycerol conversion and lactic acid selectivity were about 98% and 70%, respectively, after ten catalytic cycles.

This work explored the zinc nanoparticles obtained by the one-stage induction flow levitation method. A 10 kW tube generator with an operating frequency of 440 kHz was used. The process used 8 mm diameter zinc granules (2 g weight) with a purity of 99.9%. Zinc wire was fed to replace the evaporated metal from the granule surface. This method productivity was 30 g/h of nanoparticles. In addition, various methods were used to characterize the resulting nanoparticles: scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-Ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), dynamic light scattering (DLS), porosimetry and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-MS). The resulting nanoparticle size, determined by SEM and porosimetry, was 350 nm, while the size of the primary crystallites was 21 nm. The amount of impurities in the resulting nanoparticles did not exceed 1000 ppm.