New CCS Projects – EPSRC, September 2016 Edinburgh Biannual

This blog was written by Jinyu Liu who is a PhD student at the University of Kent and received funding to attend the Edinburgh Biannual Meeting from the UKCCSRC ECR Meeting Fund.

The last two CCS Projects introduced during the ‘New CCS Projects’ session are funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). (check out the other blogs on the EU projects and the NERC projects)

The first presentation titled ‘Development of a Compact CO₂ Capture Process to Combat Industrial Emissions’ was given by Dr Xianfeng Fan from University of Edinburgh.  He started the speech with a brief introduction of the major problems with conventional CO₂ capture method using amine process: small, dispersed CO₂ emission sources with different impurity profiles, low capture efficiency, high energy consumption, corrosion to capture device and thermal/oxidative degradation at process temperature above 100 oC. He then addressed these problems using a rotating packed bed incorporating microwave assisted regeneration of CO₂ amine solvents. On one hand, the rotating packed bed developed in Newcastle University has the packed column size as little as 10% of an equivalent conventional one which will enable small and flexible capture devices to be installed at a wide range of industrial sites. On the other hand, the revolutionary microwave assisted regeneration process developed in University of Edinburgh leads to further significant reduction in capital cost by around 50%, in the sensible heat used for CO₂ desorption, and in corrosion and solvent degradation by over 90%. Dr Xianfeng Fan concluded his speech with a well-organized project Gantt chart.

Professor Stefano Brandani, chair of Chemical Engineering at the University of Edinburgh continued with the second EPSRC funded project titled ‘Versatile Adsorption Process for the Capture of Carbon Dioxide from Industrial Sources–FlexICCS’. He first gave an overview of the FlexICCS project which is a collaboration between chemist and chemical engineers where chemist will develop suitable materials and chemical engineers will provide an optimized process to use them. The key approaches are to characterise materials using dynamic simulation and to design new experiment to scale up and test them from mg to kg level while improving energy efficiency as well as reducing process footprint. He then demonstrated a project collaborated with Howden on a 1M tonne/year CO₂ emission industrial site using rotary system. Besides the field test, an experimental approach for novel adsorbents is shown to have a capacity revolution from 10mg in the past, 10g at present and 1kg in the future. Lastly, he concluded his speech with a video showing current 10g capacity adsorbent technique under different situations.

From my perspective as an earlier career researcher working on CO₂ flow metering, it is very educational to know the research on other aspects of CCS. In addition, this Biannual meeting is inspiring to see people from different area of CCS getting together to make our planet a better place.

**Available presentations from the meeting can be found on the Edinburgh Biannual event page.**