Karim Sapag,PhD

Laboratorio de Solidos Porosos (LabSoP), Instituto de Física Aplicada (INFAP)
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – CONICET
Universidad Nacional de San Luis-UNSL, San Luis, Argentina

Prof. Sapag has a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the National University of San Luis (UNSL), Argentina, and a Doctorate in Sciences degree from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. In 2000 he founded the Porous Solids Laboratory (LabSoP) at UNSL and had been its director since. Since 2015 Prof. Sapag has been a Full Professor at the UNSL and PI at the National Council of Research in Argentina (CONICET). His research interests include studying and developing porous solids for different adsorption-based applications. He is the author of nearly 180 publications, where several involving adsorption processes mainly related to improvements in the methods and experiments used to determine textural properties from gas adsorption. In addition, Prof. Sapag delivered courses/tutorials about using gas adsorption as a characterization method in several universities and research centers. His expertise on this topic is widely recognized, mainly in Iberoamerica. He was the organizer of a series of symposia about “Adsorption, Adsorbents, and their applications” in Argentina (SAASA), starting an active network of about 100 researchers interested in Adsorption including researchers from other Ibero-American countries. In Argentina, Prof Sapag will chair the next Iberoamerican Symposium of Adsorption in 2023.

Adsorption and Nanoporous Materials for Energy, Environment and Health Applications

Solid materials with pores up to a few nanometers (nanoporous) are essential in Material Science owing to their diverse applications, mainly in the Energy, Environment, and Health fields. These applications involve surface process as adsorption, taking advantage of the nanoporous materials texture and chemical composition. The texture of a solid refers to its specific surface area, pore volume, and pore size distribution; being gas adsorption the most used process to characterize these properties. However, special care must take when using this technique, which faces specific difficulties mainly associated with the pores' size and surface groups' presence.
This lecture will address some aspects of the gas adsorption technique using N2, Ar, and CO2 to characterize nanoporous materials. The selected materials are nanoporous solids: activated carbons, zeolites, carbon nanotubes, ordered mesopores materials, metal- organic-framework, and pillared clays. These materials will apply using adsorption to store H2 and CH4 (Energy) or capture CO2 (Environment) or release drugs (Health), discussing their properties; influence on the performance of the selected application.