분리소재 및 재생가능 기술 연구실

Chemical separations consume 10 to 15% of the world's total energy, and distillation alone accounts for roughly half of all industrial process energy. A single propylene/propane splitter runs over 100 meters tall with more than 200 trays, boiling and recondensing the same molecules thousands of times to resolve a size difference of 0.2 angstrom. Replacing these thermal processes with membranes could cut that energy demand by up to 90%. SMART Lab was founded in 2025 to build the materials that make this possible. Our microporous polymers and frameworks separate molecules by pore architecture alone, at ambient temperature, with no phase change. We design that architecture with sub-angstrom precision and push past the permeability−selectivity trade-off that has bounded membrane performance since Robeson defined it in 2008. And we carry each material through the full chain from theory to membrane, module, and process, because a discovery that cannot be scaled changes nothing. By 2030, we will have proven it. Membranes that hold their separation performance for thousands of hours instead of tens, scaled from coupon to hollow fiber and spiral-wound modules, and validated on real feeds: flue gas, refinery streams, brine, spent battery leachate. Decades of membrane chemistry that never left the journals, moved into hardware that a plant engineer can install. By 2040, we will have changed the baseline. Refineries that separate crude without distillation columns. CO2 capture in a skid the size of a shipping container. Lithium recovered from seawater at battery-grade purity. Radioactive ions stripped to below drinking-water limits. Separations that today are run on fossil fuel, run instead with a film. 화학 분리 공정은 전 세계 총 에너지의 10~15%를 소비하며, 그중 증류가 산업 공정 에너지의 절반가량을 차지합니다. 프로필렌/프로판 분리탑