Chemical Engineering Seminar:IChemE Warner Medal Winner-Lecture Tour

Speaker: Dr Greg Mutch.

Event: IChemE Warner Medal Winner-Lecture Tour

Title: “Beyond Robeson, Beyond Downhill Diffusion: Molten-Salt Membranes for CO₂ Capture”.

Venue: Department of Engineering Science, Lecture room 1, Thom Building, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PJ.

Time: Friday March 6th at 2pm

Abstract: Separation and purification processes account for 10–15% of global energy consumption. Pivotal challenges across the climate, energy, and materials sectors will make separations even more prevalent, as transformative science and engineering are required to source and recover materials from increasingly dilute and complex mixtures. However, as dilution and complexity increase, so too do the energy penalty and cost of separation. This talk will describe our work on supported molten-salt membranes, which we have established as high-temperature carbon dioxide separation media capable of overcoming the permeability–selectivity (Robeson) upper bound and meeting the performance metrics required for economically viable post-combustion carbon dioxide capture. By tuning membrane composition, wettability, and pore geometry, and coupling these with transport modelling, our research elucidates coupled ionic–molecular transport, interfacial resistances, and self-healing phenomena arising from capillary retention and dynamic wetting. The membranes demonstrate stable CO2/N2 separation at process-relevant temperatures with suppressed degradation pathways. Our recent work introduced a new paradigm for dilute CO2 capture, i.e., directly from air: the humidity-driven membrane, in which ambient energy in the form of a humidity gradient is exploited to drive CO₂ “uphill”, against its concentration difference. Our current research focuses on reducing operating temperature while maintaining performance, by tuning molten-salt composition – these results will also be discussed, if we have them in time!

Brief Bio: Dr Greg A. Mutch obtained an MChem in Chemistry and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Aberdeen before joining Newcastle University in 2016 as an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow. He was subsequently awarded a Newcastle University Academic Track Fellowship in 2019 and a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in 2020. He has since taken on senior research leadership roles, including Work Package Lead in the £7M EPSRC Programme Grant SynHiSel, Co-Investigator in the £2M EPSRC Standard Grant Design, Program, Evolve, and Research Lead in the £9M EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training Process Industries: Net Zero. In 2025, he received the IChemE Warner Medal in recognition of an outstanding academic track record and exceptional contributions to outreach. He works on gas separations (membrane and sorbent technologies), in-situ spectroscopic and tomographic characterisation, and process development. He has published in leading journals including Nature Energy, Energy & Environmental Science, and JACS, and engages widely through media commentary, public communication, and consultancy with industrial and governmental organisations.

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