Paola A. Sáenz Cavazos

Project overview : Novel Characterization Techniques on Solid Sorbents for Carbon Capture under real-world conditions.

Climate change and the accumulation of greenhouse gases, especially CO₂ have become a serious concern worldwide. Coal and natural gas-fired power plants are responsible for nearly 30% of the total global emissions, with the increasing global population, meeting future energy demands with the incorporation of environmental remediation strategies is crucial.

Adsorption technology is widely used for CO₂ separation; however, the large-scale implementation of this technology highly depends on the material selectivity, adsorption capacity, regeneration, stability, and cost. Identifying the best materials for CO₂ capture is challenging since most of the studies rely on pure CO₂ and N₂ isotherms, rather than the actual flue gas mixture which contains a significant amount of H₂O and other compounds such as SO₂ and NOx.

The primary objective of this work is to develop new characterization techniques for multifunctional porous materials such as activated carbon fibres (ACFs), activated carbon, zeolites, silica adsorbents, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and assess their possible industrial application in high capacity CO₂ storage, CO₂ conversion into valuable chemical products and clean energy.

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