Novel Phenomena In Encapsulating Hydrocarbon Gases

The use of hydrophobic forces for entrapment of gases in water will be discussed. Natural hydrocarbons, haloalkanes, and anesthetic gases are hydrophobic in nature. In the course of this investigation water-soluble molecular capsules that possess hydrophobic interiors were synthesized. The encapsulation of hydrocarbon gases in water and in solid state was achieved and monitored by NMR spectroscopy. Our findings may lead to novel, capsule-based materials for gas separation and purification.

The work presented in this thesis is divided into two sections. The first section discusses the synthesis of two water soluble hemicarcerands and their use as hosts in encapsulating hydrocarbon gases in water. These systems utilize hydrophobic interactions as the driving force in the encapsulation process. Both of the synthesized hemicarcerands show the ability to encapsulate hydrocarbon gases in water. The encapsulation of the gases was monitored using 1H NMR. The second project discusses the encapsulation of hydrocarbon gases using solid state materials. It was found that traditional hemicarcerands are able to encapsulate gases in their solid-state. Therefore solid hemicarcerand 4 was tested for gas encapsulation. As expected, hemicarcerand 4 did show encapsulation of butane when flushed in the solid-state. Therefore hemicarcerand 4 was used as a monomeric unit in the synthesis of the first cavity-containing polymer. The polymer was tested for gas encapsulation.