Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Fossil fuel is a major energy resource in Canada, and the Canadian economy is highly dependent on the energy sector. Also, most of the world's energy (over 85%) comes from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the use of fossil fuels produces CO2, which is a green house gas and is believed to be a major contributor to climate change. This poses a special challenge for Canada. However, while Canada generates large amounts of CO2 from large point sources such as coal power plants exhaust gases, and off-gases of petrochemical plants, petroleum refining, oil upgrading, etc., possibilities exist for sequestering the CO2 produced in geological formations, in some cases such as in Western Canada, for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Thus, to overcome CO2 emission problems, there is great interest in capturing the CO2 and using it for EOR processes. Presently, the main obstacle to the capture and sequestration option is the high cost of CO2 capture. This is associated with the large amount of energy used for the capture process as well as operational issues such as corrosion of construction material and degradation of the chemical (amine solvent) used in CO2 capture, both of which are caused partly by the presence of impurities in the exhaust or off-gases. The proposed research will drastically minimize all these operational problems. The objective is to develop a novel chemical as well as an additive that will be formulated into an energy efficient amine solvent for CO2 capture. This novel energy efficient solvent will not only minimize the energy required for the CO2 capture process, but also, will simultaneously inhibit both corrosion and degradation when the formulated solvent is used for CO2 capture from the exhaust or off-gases. This will reduce operating costs considerably. Also, the inhibition of corrosion implies that cheaper material can be used for construction thereby resulting in much lower capital costs. The overall research will therefore result in the development of a much lower cost process for CO2 capture, which will ensure that Canada continues to use its fossil fuel resources, but in an environmentally sustainable manner.