NCCR Separations

Home institution: EPFL Valais Wallis

In the chemical industry, separation technologies are essential for isolating specific components from gas, liquid or solid mixtures. They play a key role in addressing global challenges such as climate change, rising food demand, sustainable energy supply, drinking water, environmental pollution and waste management. Yet current processes are highly inefficient: They achieve only 5–10% efficiency, consume 15% of global energy and generate significant CO2 emissions. This creates enormous potential for innovation.

A major obstacle is the gap between research and industrial implementation, known as the "valley of death" of technology. Promising technologies often fail because they are not economically or environmentally viable. The 18 research groups of the National Centre of Competence in Research "Separations - Revolutionizing separation science" intend to overcome this challenge through interdisciplinary collaboration and new approaches to the development of separation technologies.

NCCR Separations seeks to close critical technology gaps to help Switzerland achieve its sustainability goals, accelerate progress towards global climate neutrality and strengthen the Swiss economy through targeted innovation.

The NCCR focuses on three key challenges:

• CO2 capture from air: Developing scalable, cost-effective processes to efficiently remove atmospheric CO2.

• High-temperature ammonia separation: Creating novel high-temperature separation technologies to make ammonia synthesis significantly more energy-efficient.

• Recovery of critical metals: Developing processes to recover valuable metals such as lithium and cobalt from waste streams, enabling secure and sustainable material cycles.

NCCR Separations will develop specialised membranes and adsorbents – materials that selectively bind and separate substances at their surface. Its unique approach integrates material design from the outset with process modelling, cost analysis and environmental assessment, ensuring sustainable and economically viable solutions.

With a consortium spanning materials science, chemistry, physics, computer science and engineering, the NCCR will accelerate technology transfer to industry and reinforce Switzerland’s position as a hub for innovation.