Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

In the coming decades, as the world moves away from fossil fuels, there will be an increasing push to manufacture chemicals such as plastics and fuels with a zero carbon footprint. As most chemicals are carbon-based, this means that they should ultimately be derived from CO2. However, as the world moves away from fossil fuels, there will be fewer sources of CO2 available for capture. An exception is cement production, which produces CO2 as a byproduct of the calcination ("burning") of limestone to burnt lime (calcium oxide). A potential advantage of the use of cement production as a source of CO2 is that the concrete structures built from the cement can reabsorb the CO2 slowly over time, after the useful life of the chemicals. In other words, it is possible to create a closed loop from limestone to CO2 to chemicals, back to CO2 and eventually back to limestone embedded in carbonated concrete. This can potentially turn the chemical and petrochemical industries into a sustainable sector. The main objective of the research programme is to develop technology to make this transition possible. One of the main pathways to convert CO2 to chemicals and fuels is by reduction to CO followed by catalytic synthesis reactions such as methanol synthesis and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (synthetic hydrocarbon production). A promising process is a Fischer-Tropsch variant that optimizes the production of ethanol. This ethanol can be converted to ethylene, the building block of polyethylene. For these processes to be sustainable, they need to be electrified so they can run on renewable electricity. The proposed programme includes process simulations to design and optimize novel electrified versions of these and related processes. The extent of carbonation of concrete structures that can be achieved is still poorly understood. Detailed simulation models will be developed in order to improve our understanding of concrete carbonation and to develop ways to accelerate the process, by designing additives to enhance the transfer of CO2 into the concrete. To improve the reliability of the proposed models in cases where the mechanisms involved are poorly understood, it is necessary to develop fundamental theory to described these mechanisms. Examples are the solubility of CO2 in novel absorbent mixtures, known as deep eutectic solvents. These are solvent mixtures with low vapor pressure. Another gap is an incomplete understanding of how gases move in porous media, which will be addressed in the proposed program. These elements will be combined to develop a new generation of simulation models capable of describing all the phenomena studied in this program. It is anticipated that this research will accelerate the transition of the chemical industry from fossil fuel-based to renewable energy-based by developing more accurate design tools based on new fundamental knowledge of chemical processes.