The ScaleUp | You have a real affinity for CO2
The ScaleUp | You have a real affinity for CO2
Increasing capture efficacy in carbon capture, utilization, and storage solutions
The steel industry is one of the largest industrial sources of carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for 11% of carbon dioxide emissions, and 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In today’s post for The ScaleUp, where we showcase innovations from research labs and how we’d go about building an impactful, scalable business, we’ll be diving into the work from Macro Balsamo, Rosa Turco, et al. on “Post-combustion CO2 capture: On the potentiality of amino acid ionic liquid as modifying agent of mesoporous solids.“
While we will focus on its application to the steel industry, this research has possible pathways to improve carbon capture on anything that burns fossil fuels, by modifying the filtration apparatus with chemical reagents.
Problem
The steel manufacturing process involves heating and reducing iron ore using coal or natural gas. The flue gas, the gas byproduct from burning these fuels, releases a significant amount of carbon dioxide. Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) technologies help reduce emissions by capturing carbon dioxide and either storing it underground or utilizing it in other industrial processes. However, one challenge in post-combustion carbon capture, which captures carbon dioxide from the flue gas, is selectively capturing carbon dioxide from a gas stream that also contains nitrogen, oxygen, and other gasses. Macro Balsamo, Rosa Turco, et al. explore using amino acid ionic liquids to improve carbon dioxide capture.
Technology
Think of this technology as a giant filter. The ideal state is that this filter lets the nitrogen, oxygen, and other gasses pass through but holds onto the carbon dioxide. Today the filter starts with mesoporous solids; they are porous structures that have high surface area and can selectively absorb materials. However, this material alone isn’t a great filter yet for grabbing and holding on to the carbon dioxide. Other materials need to be added.
What Macro Balsamo, Rosa Turco, et al. investigate is adding another liquid to this filter setup that essentially makes it more sticky to the carbon dioxide molecules. They introduce an amino acid ionic liquid, which is a type of solvent derived from amino acids, that has many desirable properties including a high carbon dioxide absorption capacity, thermal stability, and low volatility as well as being non-toxic. By adding the solution they were able to increase the carbon dioxide capture efficacy and selectivity.
Application
There are five technical components to apply this technology:
Amino Acid Ionic Liquid (AAIL): This solvent is used to enhance the performance of the mesoporous solid to improve carbon dioxide capture from the flue gas. The AAIL solvent needs to be optimized around carbon dioxide selectivity as well as the application to maximize capture.
Absorption Tower: This vessel is what the flue gas passes through and where it comes into contact with the above solvent to capture carbon dioxide. The vessel needs to be optimized to maximize surface area between the AAIL solvent and flue gas.
Regeneration System: The AAIL solvent can only absorb and capture a finite amount of carbon dioxide. When capture efficiency begins to reduce, the solvent needs to be regenerated to release the captured carbon dioxide into the storage system so the solvent can be reused. This system needs to be optimized to maximize solvent recovery while minimizing energy consumption (which unless it is powered using renewable energy will also release greenhouse gas emissions).
Carbon Dioxide Storage: The carbon dioxide captured and pulled out of the solvent needs to go somewhere. It needs to be transported so it can either be stored underground or used in other processes.
Monitoring System: This process needs to be instrumented to monitor temperature, pressure, and solvent flow to ensure safe and efficient carbon dioxide capture.
There are existing solutions that can be modified and optimized between chemical manufacturing, metal processes, and power generation plants. We’ll focus on how to build a company around the amino acid ionic liquid solvent.
Organization Structure
The performance of the amino acid ionic liquids varies depending on factors including temperature, concentration, and pH. Further research needs to be done comparing different metal ions and organic compounds to tune the structure of these amino acids. To support this we propose a v1 team composing of:
CEO / Founder (1) - Given the technical complexity of this product we believe one of the research authors is suited for this role
Chemists (2-3) - Responsible for designing and synthesizing the solvent and tuning its properties to optimize for carbon dioxide capture
Material Scientists / Material Science Engineers (1-2) - Responsible for developing the mesoporous solid that will be modified with the solvent. There are existing solutions here so it will need to be optimized for the use case.
Chemical Engineers (2-3) - Responsible for working with external partners to integrate solution into existing equipment.
Business Development Manager (2) - Responsible for identifying and selling solution to manufacturing plants as well as forming partnerships with equipment manufacturers to develop turnkey solution.
Regulatory Speciality (1) - Responsible for working with internal and external stakeholders to comply with relevant regulations and environmental standards.
Product & Commercialization
Initially the amino acid ionic liquid will be sold to existing steel manufacturing facilities using absorption systems and to equipment manufacturers selling absorption systems. Today these systems generally use either aqueous solvents or organic solvents which are inferior to AAIL solvents; existing solvent disadvantages include corrosiveness, instability, and high energy requirements for regeneration. The value of switching to the AAIL is it will capture more carbon dioxide (which can be monetized by the plant via carbon offset credits), lower production costs due to energy requirements or equipment replacements, and reduction in cost to comply with environmental regulations.
Once the solvent has established market capture for steel manufacturing it can be expanded to other industries including chemical manufacturing and power generation. The target market becomes any manufacturing facility that uses coal or natural gas to produce energy.
Challenges
This product is not without its challenges whether technical, regulatory or competition.
Technical: The primary technical challenge for the company is scaling up solvent synthesis once the structure and composition have been optimized. Secondary technical challenges will appear during the integration phase, especially in the regeneration system.
Regulatory: Current policies lack incentives to encourage large-scale adoption of carbon capture technology. Until it makes economic sense to adopt this technology instead of releasing greenhouse gas emissions it will be difficult to convince manufacturers to adopt this technology.
Competition: Other labs and startups are looking at larger reinventions of the manufacturing process to replace the use of coal or natural gas entirely. While this technology is still decades away from large-scale adoption eventually there will be fewer and fewer facilities needing this carbon dioxide capture technology.
If you enjoyed this, check out our piece on DexMat. DexMat is developing alternative materials for some applications of copper and other metals.
