Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our generation, and the need to mitigate CO2 emissions is urgent. Since electricity generation from burning fossil fuels accounts for 40% of the world's CO2 emissions, almost all serious green house gas mitigation strategies include carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a key component of the plan. To date, large scale CCS has yet to be realized, in large part due to the fact that separating CO2 from the flue gas with current technologies requires too much energy. Implementing such technologies would consequently lead to a 60-80% increase in the cost of electricity. To address these issues, nanoporous metal-organic frameworks (MOF) and covalent organic frameworks (COF) have attracted a great deal of attention, as they have the potential to represent energy efficient CO2 scrubbers as a result of their record breaking internal surface areas and their highly tunable nature. Studies have suggested that by choosing the right framework units and substituents, these materials could significantly reduce the cost of CO2 capture making CCS practical. Presently, the information available to formulate rational design principles for these materials is limited due to the arduous synthesis and testing of these materials. In that regard, the current proposal tackles these key challenges, specifically with respect to the testing of CO2 capture by the aforementioned porous materials. The requested funding will be used to acquire a high pressure gas adsorption analyzer that will provide the necessary measurement capabilities, which will be unique in Canada. Moreover, the equipment will enable the researchers to examine materials suitable not only for post-combustion CO2 capture, but also pre-combustion CO2 capture and hydrogen generation, which are expected to be a key technologies for future clean power generation and storage.