What is your lab doing to improve carbon capture technology or utilization?Ībdul-Aziz: My laboratory develops technology for integrated CO2 capture and conversion, or ICCU, schemes where the heterogeneous catalysts (such as nickel, palladium, and copper nanoparticles) are coupled with a solid sorbent (zeolites, metal organic frameworks, metal oxides) to efficiently remove CO2 directly from air or flue gas and convert it to either renewable natural gas (methane) or ethane and ethylene. There are a limited number of commercial processes, however, with the most notable being the production of urea using CO2 and ammonia. The most common strategies for carbon capture and utilization use either thermal conversion, electrochemical conversion, or photoconversion to transform captured CO2 into basic chemicals, fine chemicals, and polymers. How is captured CO2 converted into industrially useful products?Ībdul-Aziz: Carbon capture and utilization, or CCU, is the development of technologies that can capture CO2 directly from air or from flue gas and convert the captured CO2 into chemicals and fuels. Depending on the power source used (solar, wind, geothermal etc.), this step is the costliest step of DAC technology. The use of fans and subsequent regeneration steps are energy intensive. A second process separates the CO2 from the sorbent for disposal or recycling.

Another class of carbon capture material is solid sorbents- materials that absorb other materials - that are usually functionalized with amines or have natural affinities for CO2.ĭAC plants use fans to collect and pass air through the sorbent. One method uses liquid solvent chemistry to capture CO2 as calcium carbonate. How does direct air capture, or DAC, technology work? Ozkan: Carbon capture works by separating CO2 from exhaust gases emitted from coal powered plants and other industrial factory exhausts or directly from the atmosphere. What is direct air capture of carbon dioxide (CO2)? Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz is an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering whose research focuses on creating a circular economy by converting waste products, including recovered carbon, into fuels and valuable industrial chemicals.

Carbon capture technologies