Overview

This presentation highlighted ongoing research efforts focused on carbon capture and CO₂ mitigation in chemical processes, with an emphasis on developing new materials, reactors, and electrified systems to support the energy transition. The talk introduced a recent discovery in organic-free, inorganic sorbents for carbon capture, alongside complementary work in chemical looping reactors, electrification of endothermic reactions, and early advances in sustainable aviation fuel production.

Together, these efforts aim to reduce the energy intensity, cost, and durability limitations that currently constrain large-scale decarbonization in chemical and industrial systems.

 
Expert Insights & Key Takeaways

Organic-free inorganic sorbents enable robust carbon capture
Newly developed inorganic hydroxide-based materials demonstrate high CO₂ capture capacity at low temperatures without the degradation issues typical of amine-based sorbents. These materials are hydrothermally and oxidatively stable and show no observable deactivation over extended cycling.

Water enhances, rather than inhibits, CO₂ capture
Unlike most conventional sorbents, humidity improves CO₂ uptake in this material class, enabling direct air capture without gas pretreatment and opening the door to simplified, low-energy capture processes.

Isothermal and reactive capture concepts become feasible
CO₂ can be captured and released through humidity swings rather than temperature or pressure swings, and in some cases directly converted to hydrocarbons without high-temperature desorption.

Dynamic reactor operation improves selectivity and yield
Chemical looping approaches for light olefin production show higher selectivity and yield compared to steady-state operation, especially at industrially relevant pellet sizes where new transport phenomena can be exploited.

Electrification introduces new reaction regimes
Joule-heated reactors using carbon fibers exhibit extreme spatial and temporal temperature gradients, enabling performance gains through pulse heating and dynamic operation, but also requiring new modeling and design strategies.

Catalyst design enables improved sustainable aviation fuel pathways
Ion-exchanged zeolite catalysts can shift product selectivity toward higher-value aromatics from ethanol without sacrificing catalyst stability, enhancing aviation fuel quality.

Future Outlook

This work points toward a new generation of durable, low-cost carbon capture materials and electrified reactor systems capable of significantly reducing emissions from chemical manufacturing. Future efforts will focus on scaling sorbent synthesis, integrating capture with conversion, advancing reactor engineering for dynamic operation, and validating performance under industrial conditions.

By combining materials innovation, reaction engineering, and electrification, these approaches offer promising pathways to decarbonize some of the most energy-intensive sectors of the economy while maintaining industrial performance and scalability.

Guest Speaker

Dr. Praveen Bollini

Associate Professor

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

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