Demand for technologies capable of capturing, removing and reusing CO2 grows with every CO2 increase2 molecules that reach the Earth’s atmosphere. To meet this need, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have achieved a new milestone in their efforts to make carbon capture more affordable and widespread.They created a new system to efficiently capture CO2 – by far the lowest cost – and convert it into one of the world’s most widely used chemicals: methanol.
Trap CO2 Before it floats into the atmosphere is a key factor in slowing global warming. However, creating incentives for the largest emitters to adopt carbon capture technologies is an important prerequisite. The high cost of commercial capture technology is a long-standing barrier to its widespread use.
PNNL scientists think methanol could provide that incentive. It has a variety of uses as a fuel, a solvent, and an important ingredient in plastics, paints, construction materials, and automotive parts.convert carbon dioxide2 Conversion into useful substances such as methanol provides industrial entities with a way to capture and repurpose carbon.
PNNL chemist David Heldebrant, who led the research team on the new technology, likens the system to recycling. Just as one can choose between single-use and recyclable materials, one can recycle carbon.
“That’s basically what we’re trying to do here,” Heldebrant said. “Instead of extracting oil from the ground to make these chemicals, we’re trying to extract oil from carbon dioxide2 Captured from the atmosphere or from coal-fired power plants, so it can be reorganized into something useful. You’re keeping the carbon alive, so to speak, so it’s not just “get it out of the ground, use it once, and throw it away”. We are working hard to recycle CO2, just like we try to recycle other things like glass, aluminum and plastic. “
as described in the magazine Advanced Energy Materials, the new system is designed for coal, gas or biomass fired power plants, as well as cement kilns and steel plants. Using a capture solvent developed by PNNL, the system captures CO2 The molecules are then converted into useful, marketable substances before being emitted.
There must be a long chain of dominoes to fall before carbon is either completely removed or completely prevented from entering Earth’s atmosphere. This effort—to bring capture and conversion technology to the world—represents some of the first few key areas.
Deploying the technology will reduce emissions, Heldebrant said.But it could also help drive the development of other carbon capture technologies and create a market for carbon dioxide2– Contains materials. With such a market in place, the carbon captured by the anticipated direct air capture technology could be better restructured into longer-lived materials.
Call for cheaper carbon capture
In April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Working Group III report focused on climate change mitigation. Among the emission-limiting measures outlined, carbon capture and storage is listed as necessary to achieve net-zero emissions, especially in hard-to-decarbonize industries such as steel and chemical production.
“Reducing industrial emissions will involve using materials more efficiently, reusing and recycling products, and minimizing waste,” the IPCC said in a press release alongside one of its 2022 reports. “In order to achieve net zero CO22 Emissions of carbon needed by society (e.g., plastics, wood, aviation fuel, solvents, etc.),” the report reads, “it is important to close the cycle of carbon and CO2 use by improving circularity through mechanical and chemical recycling”
PNNL’s research is focused on doing just that — in line with the U.S. Department of Energy’s carbon-negative emissions. By using hydrogen from renewable sources in the conversion process, the team can produce methanol with a lower carbon footprint than conventional methods using natural gas as a feedstock.Methanol production from CO2 Switching may qualify for policy and market incentives designed to drive the adoption of carbon-reducing technologies.
Methanol is one of the most productive chemicals in existence. Known as “platform material”, its uses are very diverse. In addition to methanol, the team can also convert CO2 Conversion to formate (another commodity chemical), methane, and others.
There is still a lot of work to be done optimizing and scaling this process, and it may be several years before it is ready for commercial deployment. But replacing traditional chemical commodities is just the beginning, says Casie Davidson, PNNL’s carbon management and fossil energy market segment manager. “The team’s integrated approach opens up a whole new world of CO2 transformation chemistry. There is a sense that we are standing on the threshold of a whole new field of scalable, cost-effective carbon technology. This is a very exciting time. “
crumbling costs
Commercial systems absorb carbon from flue gas at about $46 per metric ton of CO2, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy. The PNNL team’s goal is to continually cut costs by making the capture process more efficient and economically competitive.
Team reduces capture cost to $47.10 per metric ton of CO2 2021.A new study described in cleaner production magazine Explores the cost of running a methanol system using different capture solvents developed by PNNL, which has now dropped to just under $39 per metric ton of CO22.
“We looked at three CO2-binding solvents in this new study,” said chemical engineer Yuan Jiang, who led the evaluation. “We found that they capture more than 90 percent of the carbon that passes through them, and they do so at about 75 percent the cost of traditional solvent capture technologies.” . “
Depending on the nature of the plant or kiln, different systems can be used. However, regardless of the setting, the solvent is the core. In these systems, the solvent flushes the CO2– Enriched flue gas before discharge, leaving behind CO2 The molecules are now bound in the liquid.
Methanol from CO2 Not new. But the ability to capture carbon and then convert it to methanol in a continuous flow system is. Traditionally, capture and conversion occur as two distinct steps, separated by each process’s unique and often non-complementary chemical components.
“We ultimately want to make sure that there is a technology that can do both steps and do it well,” Heldebrant said, adding that traditional conversion techniques typically require highly purified CO2. New system is first to make methanol from ‘dirty’ carbon dioxide2.
Reducing Tomorrow’s Emissions
The process of capturing CO2 and convert it to methanol not CO2– Negative. The carbon in methanol is released when it is burned, or is sequestered when methanol is converted into longer-lived substances. But the technique does “lay the groundwork,” Heldebrant said, for the important work of keeping carbon trapped inside materials and out of the atmosphere.
Other target materials include polyurethane, which is found in adhesives, coatings and foam insulation, and polyester, which is widely used in textile fabrics.Once researchers determined the chemistry behind converting CO2 Translating this into material that keeps it out of the atmosphere on climate-relevant timescales, an extensive network of capture systems could be ready to run such reactions.
Instead of today’s chimneys, Heldebrant envisions CO2 Refineries are built in or next to power plants where CO2-Includes products that can be made on site. “We are at an inflection point,” Helderbrandt and his co-authors wrote in a recent article in the journal chemical science“We can continue to use 20th century monolithic capture and conversion infrastructure, or we can begin the transition to a new 21st century paradigm of integrated solvent-based carbon capture and conversion technology.”
This technology is available for licensing. Please contact Sara Hunt, PNNL Commercialization Manager, for more information.
This work was supported by the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, and the Southern California Gas Company. Part of the work was performed at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory EMSL, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at PNNL.
