“Sustainable Energy: Options for the Future.
Stabilizing the Carbon Dioxide Content
of the Atmosphere”
Carbon dioxide capture and storage is an important tool in stopping climate change. Unfortunately, nearly half of all CO2 is emitted from small and often mobile sources like cars and airplanes, for which on-board capture is impractical or even impossible. To this end we investigated the possibility of capturing CO2 directly from ambient air. The advantage of such air capture is that it can be performed anywhere and at any time.
We were able to demonstrate a novel, thermodynamically efficient and economic approach to capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air. The carbon dioxide is absorbed from ambient air onto an anionic exchange resin and later recovered by driving the CO2 off the resin with nothing more than moisture. The energy input into this separation cycle is limited to the compression of the gas stream. The cycle shares this energy penalty with most other CO2 capture technologies. Even in a full life cycle analysis, the process greatly reduces CO2 accumulations in the atmosphere.
Air capture of carbon dioxide is an enabling technology that helps solve the climate change problem by countering CO2 emissions without having to change the existing energy infrastructure. Most importantly it allows for the continued use of hydrocarbon fuels in the transportation sector. Operating at a sufficient scale, air capture can be used to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Given a source of low-cost, non-fossil electricity, air capture can produce synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from CO2, H2O and carbon-free energy, thus moving from a world based on fossil fuels with carbon dioxide capture and storage to a world with a closed carbon and hydrogen cycle that still enjoys the high energy density and convenience of liquid hydrocarbon fuels for storing and shipping energy.
Presented by Prof. Klaus Lackner
Columbia University,
Department of Earth and Environmental
Engineering
Hosted by Prof. Bruce Berne
Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 4:30pm
Room 209 Havemeyer
Tea & cookies will be served in The Miller Seminar Room 328 Havemeyer prior to the lecture.
