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Scientists bridge the ‘valley of death’ in carbon capture technologies
24/7/2024
A major obstacle for net zero technologies in combatting climate change is bridging the gap between fundamental research and its application in the real world. This gap, ‘the valley of death’, is common in the field of carbon capture, where novel materials are used to remove CO2 from flue gases produced by industrial processes, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change. A team of scientists from Heriot-Watt University, Scotland, has developed a pioneering platform to bridge this gap.
Chemists have proposed and synthesised thousands of novel materials, such as metal-organic frameworks, with the specific purpose of capturing as much CO2 as possible. But while results may look promising in a laboratory setting, it is difficult to know how effective these materials will perform in real-life scenarios. The PrISMa (Process-Informed design of tailor-made Sorbent Materials) platform uses advanced simulations and machine learning to find the most cost-effective and sustainable material-capture process combinations prior to implementation.
Professor Susana Garcia, Associate Director of Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) at the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS) at Heriot-Watt, led the study. She explains: ‘The PrISMa platform is a modelling tool that integrates different aspects of carbon capture, including materials, process design, economic analysis and life cycle assessment. We use quantum chemistry, molecular simulation and machine learning to predict, for new materials, all the data that is needed to design a process. Alternatively, we can use the experimental data from materials synthesised in a lab. The platform then evaluates their performance in over 60 different case studies from around the world.’
According to Garcia, this innovative approach ‘accelerates the discovery of top-performing materials for carbon capture, surpassing traditional trial-and-error methods’, providing stakeholders with valuable insights. Engineers gain information to identify economic and environmental challenges, chemists receive molecular design targets, CO2 producers learn about local integration benefits, and investors identify optimal locations for implementation.
The research team claims that PrISMa is already yielding impressive results, with the platform having been used to accurately simulate the implementation of carbon capture technologies in cement plants located in different regions of the world. It found suitable materials for each location, cutting costs by half when compared with previous technologies, they report.
PrISMa also offers an interactive tool that allows users to explore the potential of over 1,200 materials for carbon capture applications.
‘Identifying more top-performing carbon capture materials increases the likelihood of advancing some of them to the next Technological Readiness Level,’ notes Garcia.
PrISMa has been led by Heriot-Watt University in partnership with scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zurich, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley in the US, and the Institut des Matériaux Poreux de Paris in France.
‘This study highlights the need to follow a holistic approach when evaluating technologies to achieve our net zero targets. The platform speeds up materials discovery for carbon capture applications and focuses research and development efforts towards achievable performance targets at scale. The tool can help tremendously our current industrial decarbonisation efforts. It can play a key role in informing investment strategies and policy decisions on more sustainable and cost-effective carbon-capture solutions,’ concludes Garcia.
The platform and its associated research have been published in the journal Nature.
