(365g) Integrating Process Design and Materials Genomics for Energy Efficient Adsorption-Based Capture Technologies

Separations use as much as 15% of our energy consumption; the future of our planet may depend on the efficiency at which we capture CO₂, currently one of the boldest separation research areas.¹Recent developments in synthetic chemistry allow us to synthesize millions of different nanoporous crystalline materials. For instance, by combining a metal node with an organic linker, one can synthesize a nearly infinite number of metal organic frameworks (MOFs).²However, designing and constructing tailor-made materials for specific applications is one of the key research challenges that still remains to be addressed. In other words, a systematic approach on how to select from such a large number of materials, the ones that are optimal for a given carbon-capture process, is still lacking.

In this work, we integrate recent developments in Material Science and Materials Genomics,³in which we generate in silico millions of candidate materials for CO₂capture, with process design and techno-economic and environmental analyses. The lack of such integration has been identified as one of the key bottlenecks that limit the prospect of novel materials for carbon capture technologies to reach the market. This study is carried out within the framework of the PrISMa project (http://www.act-ccs.eu/prisma), which is an international effort that aims to accelerate the transition of energy and industrial sectors to a low-carbon economyby developinga technology platform to tailor-make cost-efficient carbon capture solutionsfor a range of different CO₂sources and CO₂use/destinations.Our aimed technology platform will allow us to tailor-make carbon capture solutions in terms of an effective carbon price (ECP) that makes a particular process economically viable. To achieve that, we integrate materials and process design, supported by computational materials genomic approaches, machine-learning, high-throughput material synthesis and characterization, device-performance testing, value chain analysis and systematic process design.

Through this integration, we aim to change the paradigm on how novel materials are developed for chemical engineering applications. Some recent results⁴from the PrISMa collaboration involved the design of a metal organic framework that can capture CO₂in wet flue gasses (see Figure 1). As a similar approach can be developed for other separations, we expect the impact of this work in terms of the potential to decrease the time to market for novel materials to go beyond carbon capture applications.

Acknowledgements

The PrISMa Project (No 299659) is funded through the ACT programme (Accelerating CCS Technologies, Horizon2020 Project No 294766). Financial contributions made from: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) together with extra funding from NERC and EPSRC Research Councils, United Kingdom; The Research Council of Norway, (RCN), Norway; Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), Switzerland; and US-Department of Energy (US-DOE), USA, are gratefully acknowledged. Additional financial support from TOTAL and Equinor is also gratefully acknowledged.

References

[1]B. Smit and S. Garcia, Carbon capture and storage: making fossil fuels great again?Europhys. News 51(2), 20 (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/epn/2020203

[2]H. Furukawa, K. E. Cordova, M. O'Keeffe, and O. M. Yaghi, The Chemistry and Applications of Metal-Organic FrameworksScience 341(6149), 974 (2013) http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/Science.1230444

[3]P. G. Boyd, Y. J. Lee, and B. Smit, Computational development of the nanoporous materials genomeNat Rev Mater 2(8), 17037 (2017) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.37

[4]P. G. Boyd, A. Chidambaram, E. Garcia-Diez, C. P. Ireland, T. D. Daff, R. Bounds, A. Gladysiak, P. Schouwink, S. M. Moosavi, M. M. Maroto-Valer, J. A. Reimer, J. A. R. Navarro, T. K. Woo, S. Garcia, K. C. Stylianou, and B. Smit, Data-driven design of metal-organic frameworks for wet flue gas CO2 captureNature 576(7786), 253 (2019) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1798-7

Figure 1: A molecular representation of the carbon capture material Al-PMOF (picture by Mohamad Moosavi and Kevin Jablonka; iRASPA software was used for visualisation)