Water-soluble polyacrylamides have often been used to modify flow response in various water-based technologies and industrial processes, including paints, water treatment, paper manufacturing, and chemical enhanced oil recovery. Polymers are susceptible to degradation at combined high salinity and elevated temperature conditions which limits their overall performance. Hybrid mixtures of hydrophobically modified polyacrylamide (HMPAM) with hydrophobically modified silica nanoparticles (NPs) emerged as a promising strategy for achieving enhanced stability and high viscosity in brines having a high total dissolved solids (TDS) content and high hardness at elevated temperatures (>20 wt% TDS, including >1.5 wt% divalent cations at T > 70 °C). The rheological response of the hybrids at various concentrations of HMPAM and NPs was examined to investigate the synergic effects. Hybridization of HMPAM with NPs led to a higher viscosity at high salinity and elevated temperature. The viscosity improvement was more pronounced when the concentration of HMPAM was in the semi-dilute regime and concentration of NPs was higher than a critical threshold where the viscosity increased roughly by a factor of 1.5. Here we present the mechanisms of improved viscosity behaviour. The rheological data suggest the role of NPs in the bridging between HMPAM molecules, which in turn increases the hydrodynamic radius and consequently the viscosity of the hybrids.@en

CEMCAP is an international R&D project under the Horizon 2020 Programme preparing the ground for the large-scale implementation of CO₂ capture in the European cement industry. This paper concerns the performance modeling of membrane-assisted CO₂ liquefaction as a possible retrofit application for post combustion CO₂ capture. For the relatively large CO₂ concentrations that are typical for the flue gas in conventional cement kilns, it may be possible to capture CO₂ by combining a single membrane unit for bulk separation and a CO₂ liquefaction train in which the waste stream is recycled and mixed with the feed to the membrane system. The required membrane surface area is strongly correlated with the CO₂ concentration in the cement kiln flue gas, as well as targeted CO₂ recovery, pressure ratio across the membrane, membrane separation factor and CO₂ permeance. Specifications for flue gas pre-conditioning and an overall techno-economic evaluation are planned to follow the evaluation of experimental results for membrane performance under realistic conditions, as well as for CO₂ liquefaction performance. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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