Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Canada benefits tremendously from revenues derived from coal, crude oil royalties, taxes, and sales of petroleum leases as well as the associated employment and economic activity derived from the fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, Canada's energy utilization rate per capita is one of the highest in the world because Canada is a large northern country with a dispersed population base. Also, the majority of current and increasing energy needs is essentially supplied by combustion of fossil fuels. These fossil fuels have high carbon intensities, and their extraction and processing are not only very energy intensive, but also have a major impact on the environment. In particular, energy production from fossil fuels has recently been shown to be the key contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas(GHG), which has a direct influence on climate change and global warming. For example, oil sands production, crude oil refining, electric power generation from fossil fuels, natural gas processing, and so on contribute to an increase in emissions of GHGs, especially CO2 and other pollutants such as oxides of sulphur (SOx), hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). In Canada, CO2 constitutes about 80% of the total GHGs emitted. The challenge lies in finding a solution that will allow Canada to benefit from its fossil fuel resources in an environmentally sustainable manner as a clean fuel. CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a major component of the approaches used to address these issues. However, the main obstacle to CO2 capture is that it is currently not efficient because the energy penalty and the plant size are very large leading to a high cost for CO2 capture. This strategic research will develop a novel, breakthrough, game-changing amine-based catalyst-aided technology that will achieve a dramatic reduction in energy requirements and a large reduction in equipment size that will reduce the cost of CO2 and other pollutants' removal from coal-related exhaust gases (for achieving cleaner fossil fuel energy) to a level where a business case can easily be made for CCS. Then, CO2 capture can be implemented based on economic benefits rather than based purely on environmental regulations.