New tech offers pathway for instantly converting carbon dioxide as it is produced and locking it permanently in a solid state, keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere.
RMIT UNIVERSITY
Australian researchers have developed a smart and super-efficient new way of capturing carbon dioxide and converting it to solid carbon, to help advance the decarbonisation of heavy industries.
The carbon dioxide utilisation technology from researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, is designed to be smoothly integrated into existing industrial processes.
Decarbonisation is an immense technical challenge for heavy industries like cement and steel, which are not only energy-intensive but also directly emit CO2 as part of the production process.
The new technology offers a pathway for instantly converting carbon dioxide as it is produced and locking it permanently in a solid state, keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere.
The research is published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Co-lead researcher Associate Professor Torben Daeneke said the work built on an earlier experimental approach that used liquid metals as a catalyst.
“Our new method still harnesses the power of liquid metals but the design has been modified for smoother integration into standard industrial processes,” Daeneke said.
“As well as being simpler to scale up, the new tech is radically more efficient and can break down CO2 to carbon in an instant.
“We hope this could be a significant new tool in the push towards decarbonisation, to help industries and governments deliver on their climate commitments and bring us radically closer to net zero.”
A provisional patent application has been filed for the technology and researchers have recently signed a $AUD2.6 million agreement with Australian environmental technology company ABR, who are commercialising technologies to decarbonise the cement and steel manufacturing industries.
Co-lead researcher Dr Ken Chiang said the team was keen to hear from other companies to understand the challenges in difficult-to-decarbonise industries and identify other potential applications of the technology.
“To accelerate the sustainable industrial revolution and the zero carbon economy, we need smart technical solutions and effective research-industry collaborations,” Chiang said.
The steel and cement industries are each responsible for about 7% of total global CO2 emissions (International Energy Agency), with both sectors expected to continue growing over coming decades as demand is fuelled by population growth and urbanisation.
Technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) have largely focused on compressing the gas into a liquid and injecting it underground, but this comes with significant engineering challenges and environmental concerns. CCS has also drawn criticism for being too expensive and energy-intensive for widespread use.
Daeneke, an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, said the new approach offered a sustainable alternative, with the aim of both preventing CO2 emissions and delivering value-added reutilisation of carbon.
“Turning CO2 into a solid avoids potential issues of leakage and locks it away securely and indefinitely,” he said.
“And because our process does not use very high temperatures, it would be feasible to power the reaction with renewable energy.”
The Australian Government has highlighted CCS as a priority technology for investment in its net zero plan, announcing a $1 billion fund for the development of new low emissions technologies.
How the tech works
The RMIT team, with lead author and PhD researcher Karma Zuraiqi, employed thermal chemistry methods widely used by industry in their development of the new CCS tech.
The “bubble column” method starts with liquid metal being heated to about 100-120C.
Carbon dioxide is injected into the liquid metal, with the gas bubbles rising up just like bubbles in a champagne glass.
As the bubbles move through the liquid metal, the gas molecule splits up to form flakes of solid carbon, with the reaction taking just a split second.
“It’s the extraordinary speed of the chemical reaction we have achieved that makes our technology commercially viable, where so many alternative approaches have struggled,” Chiang said.
The next stage in the research is scaling up the proof-of-concept to a modularized prototype the size of a shipping container, in collaboration with industry partner ABR.
ABR Project Director David Ngo said the RMIT process turns a waste product into a core ingredient in the next generation of cement blends.
“Climate change will not be solved by one single solution, however, the collaboration between ABR and RMIT will yield an efficient and effective technology for our net-zero goals,” Ngo said.
The team is also investigating potential applications for the converted carbon, including in construction materials.
“Ideally the carbon we make could be turned into a value-added product, contributing to the circular economy and enabling the CCS technology to pay for itself over time,” Daeneke said.
The research involved a multi-disciplinary collaboration across engineering and science, with RMIT co-authors Jonathan Clarke-Hannaford, Billy James Murdoch, Associate Professor Kalpit Shah and Professor Michelle Spencer.
‘Direct Conversion of CO2 to Solid Carbon by Liquid Metals’, with collaborators from University of Melbourne and Deakin University, is published in Energy & Environmental Science (DOI: 10.1039/d1ee03283f).
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Energy & Environmental Science
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Even if this worked at scale the problem remains…the Leftists want the oil, gas and coal to STAY IN THE GROUND and usher in an extractive, nuclear power free world, much smaller and more highly controlled than the one that exists now. Global Warming/Climate Change = Fence posts and barbed wire.
If you look at this from the point of view of thermodynamics you still need to use a huge amount of energy to force CO2 to revert to carbon and oxygen. It is combustion of coal in reverse. Not possible to do this without using more energy than would be obtained by burning the carbon in the first place. Only will work if you have access to unlimited low cost energy. In which case you could use the energy to reverse combustion of CO2 and water to create hydrocarbon fuels!
Carbon capture is the super capacitor of grant seekers.
This new technology could have been interesting if its useful effect was anything other than an expensive method of producing carbon out of CO2.
Seem a bit odd to use liquid metal reduce CO2 to carbon. You are basically reversing the coal combustion process and you have to recover the energy that the combustion process released.
One thing Australia has a lot of that most other countries don’t is warm shallow seas. This is essential to taking dissolved CO2 in sea water, reacting it with the alkaline earth minerals it contains and precipitating out CaCO3 or MgCO3. They would be uniquely suited to take advantage of this sequestering method without violating any laws of thermodynamics.
The only effective way of sequestering CO2, assuming that is desirable is to grow grain in the Midwest and bury it in huge holes in the southwestern desert, so that when we realize what a monumental disaster it was we can burn the the petrified corn in power stations.
CO2 for a green and equitable world.
Probably needs more research. Much more.
How does making carbon “decarbonize” anything? I think the ridiculousness of referring to CO2 as “carbon” is exposed here.
Compare space, energy expenditure (heating metal, pumping CO2, extracting/purifying CO2) per kilo “solid” carbon against equivalent mass produced in a peat bog. Award the government grant to the winner.
With free energy, you could do anything.
Or you could just plant some trees.
We have plants, bacteria and phytoplankton that take CO2 out of the atmosphere at no cost and put O2 back. I can’t see how this is better. In fact I think I am being snowed.
Sincere Thanks to all of the authors of the articles, the posters (even those demonstrating no Critical Thinking skills), and WUWT. As an 86 year-young guy (my ‘identifier’) with limited formal education, I find this Site SO stimulating! (scientifically speaking) Thanks so much!
Also.. FUN!
Do they also have a process to reverse the oxidization of the metal(s) used? or is this currently only half the job, a deadend, based on consumables & waste products?
Sounds more like fantasies than facts regarding the practical & economic use of such technology with sufficient scale.
Having been in process development and scale-up for 30 years, I cringe and then run away when I hear the words “easily scaleable”
Welcome in LA LA land. I am literally rolling on the floor laughing. EGaln means that this is an alloy of gallium and indium. Indium is incredibly rare and is most of the time a by-product of the extraction of Zn (either in VMS or SEDEX deposits). The annual worldwide production is about 1200T.
how can one seriously believe that this process will be ever more than a simple laboratory curiosity?
Solid carbon? So, it makes fuel? What a great tech.
If you could get the carbon to deposit as diamonds it could be self funding
Well apart from the fact that it would flood the market with diamonds, making them much lower value.
DeBeers family might have something to say about that.
Australian researchers have developed a smart and super-efficient new way…
Well good to know they have developed a New Way. Developing an old way would possibly be plagiarism.
Also the words ‘smart’ and ‘super-efficient’. Weasels want their words back.
I had to sit through 60mins of internal training on Cost Benefit Analysis yesterday at the Day Job. Sure I slept though most of it, but have a high confidence that the word ‘super’ was never uttered. It is a meaningless term unless a point of reference can be established.
The target audience for this media release are who exactly?
Can we devise a publicity campaign for cyanide capsules? We should be able to make a bundle selling them to the public.
“)n the Beach” is the 1959 film starring Ava Gardner, made around Melbourne Australia and with a plot of the end of global people because of the over-use a radiation-laden nuclear bombs.
The situation has become hopeless, so the Government has developed a program on handing out free suicide pills. (I kid you not). In the interests of a fair deal, there is a scene where a lady bureaucrat with a clipboard is marking off the names of people getting the free Government favour, just in case someone manages to sneak an extra one. Geoff S
Looks like they are converting CO2 into little charcoal briquettes perfect for the backyard barbecue. Or grind them up in a pulverizer on a coal fired boiler. They should be about like anthracite coal but without polutants like sulfur or mercury.
The only way to reduce the carbon atom to elemental carbon is to either add energy to push the reaction forward or use a material that wants oxygen more than carbon. There are few metals that can strip the oxygen away from carbon and since they oxidize, they will have to be refined again to be reused, requiring more energy than the energy produced by burning whatever made the CO2 in the first place. Sounds like a losing proposition and completely infeasible.
Ice 9
So how long before the metal is oxidised and you need to turn it back into metal again?
Are these just ways to get rid of energy because who needs it really?
You reduce CO2 with Gallium to form Carbon and Galliumoxide.
Question: How do you recover Gallium from Galliumoxide to make it available again for the process.
Voodooooo Science indeed !