Joan Brennecke

Joan F. Brennecke
McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract: Hydrogen Stable Olefin/Paraffin Separation
Olefins are a key building block of the petrochemicals industry because they are precursor materials for numerous chemical products and plastics. The current commercial production method is steam cracking of ethane followed by cryogenic distillation of olefin/paraffin mixtures, which involves large energy consumption and greenhouse gas footprint. Membranes using facilitated transport show promising olefin/paraffin selectivity due to the presence of carriers that specifically complex with olefins. Unfortunately, facilitated transport-based membranes for olefin/paraffin separation have not been viable because the silver carriers deactivate rapidly in the presence of any H₂, which chemically reduces the silver salts to inactive silver metal.  While a number of groups have shown that supported ionic liquid (IL)/silver salt membranes (SILMs) show good olefin/paraffin selectivity, we have discovered that some ILs provide protection of the silver salts from reduction by H₂, leading to stable performance over long times.  Our initial work has been with ceramic supports and we have shown that we can make the ceramic equivalent of asymmetric polymeric membranes by using alumina membranes whose surfaces have been modified with silica.  These membranes have an effective thickness of less than a micron, resulting is exceptionally high flux.  We are now working to translate these discoveries into more easily processed polymeric membranes.  These innovations pave the way for selective olefin/paraffin separation with dramatically reduced energy consumption, that is viable from laboratory to commercial scale operation.

Biography:

Joan F. Brennecke is currently Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering #16 in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She began her academic career at the University of Notre Dame after completing her Ph.D. and M.S. (1989 and 1987) degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B. S. at the University of Texas at Austin (1984). 
Her research interests are primarily in the development of less environmentally harmful solvents.  These include supercritical fluids and ionic liquids. In developing these solvents, Dr. Brennecke’s primary interests are in the measurement and modeling of thermodynamics, thermophysical properties, phase behavior and separations.  Major awards include the 2001 Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society, the 2006 Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the J. M. Prausnitz Award at the Eleventh International Conference on Properties and Phase Equilibria in Greece in May, 2007, the 2008 Stieglitz Award from the American Chemical Society, the 2009 E. O. Lawrence Award from the U.S. Department of Energy, and the 2014 E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.  She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data since 2010.  Her 200+ research publications have garnered over 20,000 citations (ISI).  She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2012 and recently served as the Chair of The National Academies study on A Research Agenda for a New Era in Separations Science.