Separation applied sciences are the workhorses of contemporary society. Essential for isolating particular elements from gasoline, liquid, or stable mixtures, they supply the purified water, meals, and prescribed drugs we eat, and the supplies that go into our houses, automobiles, and digital gadgets. Improving the efficiency of separation applied sciences is crucial for addressing many international challenges, corresponding to capturing CO₂ immediately from the air, making ammonia manufacturing extra energy-efficient, and recovering important metals from waste streams.
The Swiss Confederation is in the present day recognizing EPFL’s distinctive expertise on this subject by supporting a new National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR). Led by EPFL professor Wendy Queen and co-directed by EPFL professor Kumar Agrawal, the new NCCR “Separations” seeks to develop new methods in separation science and shut important expertise gaps to assist Switzerland obtain its sustainability objectives, speed up progress in the direction of international local weather neutrality and strengthen the Swiss financial system by way of focused innovation.
The new NCCR is one of the six new NCCRs launched by the Swiss Confederation to bolster Swiss research and innovation actions in strategically vital areas corresponding to drugs, quantum expertise and local weather. During the preliminary working part from 2026 to 2029, the federal authorities will present CHF 98.7 million in seed funding for these in depth research undertakings. Participating larger training establishments and research institutes will contribute extra funding no less than equal to the quantity offered by the federal authorities.
From basic research to business
The NCCR “Separations” is assured CHF 16.59 million in funding from the Confederation and 21.3 million Swiss francs value of contributions from numerous Swiss establishments over the following 4 years with a most undertaking period of twelve years. Eighteen research teams from seven establishments, together with six at EPFL, will contribute their expertise in supplies science, chemistry, physics, laptop science, and numerous engineering fields.
The assist offered by Bern is meant to bridge the hole between research and industrial implementation, as many promising applied sciences fail to progress as a result of they aren’t economically or environmentally viable. “The sobering reality is that bringing new technologies to market is a notoriously slow process, often taking two decades to go from initial invention to widespread commercial adoption”, explains Wendy Queen, Head of the Laboratory for Functional Inorganic Materials. “In the face of urgent global challenges—from climate change to the energy transition—we simply cannot afford such delays. Our mission with the NCCR is not only to develop separation technologies that are fundamentally more cost-effective, energy-efficient, and environmentally sustainable, but also to devise a novel approach to accelerate their translation from research to industrial implementation.”
The research groups involved in the NCCR “Separations” are: Wendy L. Queen, Director (EPFL), Kumar Varoon Agrawal, Co-director (EPFL), André Bardow, Deputy director (ETH), Nicola Marzari (EPFL), Philippe Schwaller (EPFL), Nathalie Casas (EMPA), Mathieu Soutrenon (HES-SO), Christoph Müller (ETH), Ali Coskun (University of Fribourg), Manuele Margni (HES-SO). Paula Abdala (ETH), Michele Ceriotti (EPFL). Randall Snurr (Northwestern University), Arvind Rajendran (University of Alberta), Andreas Borgschulte (EMPA), Sandra Galmarini (EMPA), Florian Kiefer (EMPA), Rachel Huang (EPFL) and Anthony Straub (ETH).
The interdisciplinary research teams concerned within the NCCR “Separations” intend to focus first on three important purposes areas:
– CO2 seize from air: Developing scalable, cost-effective processes to effectively take away atmospheric CO2.
– High-temperature ammonia separation: Creating novel high-temperature separation applied sciences to make ammonia syn¬thesis considerably extra energy-efficient.
– Recovery of important metals: Developing processes to get well helpful metals corresponding to lithium and cobalt from waste streams, enabling safe and sustainable materials cycles.
The researchers will develop specialised membranes and adsorbents – supplies that selectively bind and separate substances at their floor. Its distinctive strategy integrates materials design from the outset with course of modelling, value evaluation and environmental evaluation, making certain sustainable and economically viable options.
The sixth sequence of NCCRs is the results of a name for proposals and analysis course of launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) on the finish of 2023. Acting on behalf of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), the SNSF scientifically reviewed over 75 proposals submitted in a multi-stage course of. International specialists assisted with the evaluate course of. Eleven tasks deemed to be of excellent high quality have been short-listed and despatched to SERI because the competent authority. Following an evaluation by SERI from a research and better training coverage perspective, and making an allowance for the accessible funding, the pinnacle of EAER determined to launch six new NCCRs.
National Centres of Competence in Research are supposed to provide rise to new lasting constructions and keep the excellence and worldwide positioning of Swiss research actions. By their very nature, NCCRs undertake interdisciplinary approaches to scientifically, socially and economically related subjects. NCCRs additionally play a key function in supporting early-career researchers and selling ladies in science. They obtain federal funding for a most interval of twelve years. The federal authorities has used such programmes to assist excellent research of strategic significance since 2001.