Vice-President of the North American Catalysis Society to present the Annual VSCEB 2019 Ensor Lecture
About the event
Amine-Modified Silicates as CO2 Sorbents that Enable Direct Air Capture Technologies
Worldwide energy demand is projected to grow strongly in the coming decades, with most of the growth in developing countries. Even with unprecedented growth rates in the development of renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and bioenergy, the world will continue to rely on fossil fuels as a predominant energy source for at least the next several decades. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that anthropogenic CO2 has contributed measurably to climate change over the course of the last century. To this end, there is growing interest in new technologies that might allow continued use of fossil fuels without drastically increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations beyond currently projected levels. In this lecture, I will describe the design and synthesis, characterization and application of new aminosilica materials that we have developed as cornerstones of new technologies for the removal of CO2 from dilute gas streams. These chemisorbents efficiently remove CO2 from simulated flue gas streams, and the CO2 capacities are actually enhanced by the presence of water, unlike in the case of physisorbents such as zeolites. Interestingly, the heat of adsorption for these sorbents is sufficiently high that the sorbents are also capable of capturing CO2 from extremely dilute gas streams, such as the ambient air. Indeed, our oxide-supported amine adsorbents are quite efficient at the direct “air capture” of CO2 and we will describe our investigations into development of “air capture” technologies as well. Air capture systems offer one of the few scalable options that could be deployed as a negative carbon technology, actually reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, potentially allowing the slow reversal of climate change. Implementation of such negative emissions technologies (NETs) is now widely recognized to be a necessity for achieving climate scenarios of less than 2 °C global temperature rise.
Christopher Jones is the William R. McLain Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He previously served as Associate Vice President for Research from 2013-2019, including a period as Interim Executive Vice-President for Research in 2018. Dr. Jones leads a research group that works in the broad areas of materials, catalysis and adsorption. He is known for his extensive and pioneering work on materials that extract CO2 from ultra-dilute mixtures such as ambient air, which are key components of direct air capture (DAC) technologies. For the past decade, he has worked closely with Global Thermostat LLC, on DAC technology development. He has also produced an extensive body of work in catalysis, including heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, spanning from asymmetric catalysis in organic synthesis (specialty synthesis) to conversion of syngas into higher alcohols ( commodity production). Jones has published almost 300 peer-reviewed scholarly papers on catalysis and separations, and has mentored 100 MS, PhD and post-doctoral students over the past 20 years. The American Chemical Society recognized Jones’ catalysis research with the lpatieff Prize in 2010, followed by the North American Catalysis Society with the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis in 2013. Dr. Jones is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and is Vice-President of the North American Catalysis Society. In 2016, he was recognized by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for his work in catalysis and CO2 capture with the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress.