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).
JOURNAL
Energy & Environmental Science
DOI
The base idea that CO2 needs to be removed from the atmosphere is wrong.
Photosynthesis has been around for a couple billion years.
Photosynthesis uses CO2 and solar energy to produce carbohydrate molecules.
O2 is released into the atmosphere as a byproduct.
Those molecules are used by the plant to produce more cells.
Later life forms found out you could eat the plants and use O2 to metabolize the sugar.
All life on Earth depends on CO2 in the atmosphere.
It’s called the biogeochemical carbon cycle.
The Earth needs MORE CO2 in the atmosphere, not less.
It’s a joke ! This just a laboritory experiment with no concept of a scaled up version.
It would have to be scaled up 1,000’s of times for industrial applications . .
I’ve discovered an easier way. You take this seed and place it at depth in soil and you water it. This process very cheaply converts Co2 to carbon!
If you then chop it down and cut it up into lumber and build crap with it it is stored forever. You then just plant another seed and start the process over!
Send a billion dollars and I’ll let you in my secret!
Scary stuff. I wouldn’t want to live near it. CO2 is essential for life, not just plants but animals.
I’m happy to let people play silly games with Renewables, but this is different.
A quick search shows the worldwide production of each of the metals involved is about 1,000 tons per year, despite their high prices. They only need ramp that up to 6,000,000,000 per year for the steel and cement industry to capture their carbon.
$64 question – when they implement this non-solution to the imaginary problem and CO2 levels continue to climb anyway, will they finally admit they are wrong about human CO2 emissions driving the atmospheric CO2 level?!
$64 question
I’ll say, NO
First off, 110-120 deg C is very low, so what is the metal, bismuth?
Second, where does the oxygen go from the CO2? It is likely creating metal oxides that then have to be dealt with to rejuvenate the metal.
There is no free lunch and this technology has to use energy (waste) to produce a product that is simply coal for all intents and purposes.
Co2 is plant food and has no downsides. So, what is this stupid endeavor supposed to accomplish?
“Carbon Sequestration” The stupidest Idea ever proposed by MAN……..
The carbon black produced by this process is nothing like coal.
One of the key qualities of thermal coal is the Volatile Matter. Most thermal coals are 30 odd% of it. This is what makes some coals very easy to burn, and others, with less than 10% are notoriously difficult to ignite, some will even go close to putting a furnace out.
Wonderful! Now, if we could only heat the metal without using CO2-emitting backup generators.
The dumbing down of RMIT University is complete.
I hope to live long enough to see a politician write legislation making any form of CO² suppression illegal from the context of starving plants which results in less food in the food chain or in other words, for the children…
What they don’t mention is the energy required per mol to reduce the gallium oxide produced. Is the gallium oxide in the liquid metal directly reduced via electrolysis ?
Anyway, there’s no free lunch …
I’m a little curious as to how they’re proposing to heat the metal they’re melting in order to complete this process.
Other than mercury, what metal is liquid between 100 and 120 Celsius?
3 questions:
I guess you could use hydrogen to regenerate the galium oxide, but this whole thing is a mess. This is a fraud with regards to CCS. But it might have some cool niche applications.