Enabling advanced post-combustion CO2 capture through energy-efficient separation technologies

Monday, April 7, 2014 - 5:00 p.m. to Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - 4:55 p.m.
Engineering Hall 2430, Harut Barsamian Colloquia Room

Dr. Fateme Rezaei

Georgia Institute of Technology

 

Developments in adsorption processes for capturing CO2 from flue gas streams, to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, usually focus attention on improved adsorbents especially with regard to the adsorption capacity and selectivity. However, improvements in performance and reduction in cost of cyclic adsorption processes are also dependent on parameters that are dictated by the structure of the adsorbent. These factors play an important role in the size of the process equipment, the attainable product purity and recovery, and the resulting power consumption. All of these affect system cost. In this talk, I will introduce energy-efficient approaches to the capture of CO2 from pulverized coal power plants. In particular, I will provide a detailed look at development of a novel route to the post-combustion CO2 capture and discuss how hollow fiber adsorbents function as integrated adsorbing heat exchanging devices. The discussion will specifically focus on experimental and modeling studies of a rapid temperature swing adsorption (RTSA) process using amine functionalized-polymer hollow fibers as a novel adsorbent configuration with many promising properties for applications in CO2 capture from post-combustion flue gas. This hollow fiber configuration is a scalable platform which can potentially lower the overall cost of CO2 capture and bring the carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology one step closer to commercialization.

Overall, the development of successful energy-efficient technologies to reduce CO2 emissions will rest upon the optimization of adsorbent configuration as well as the design of new processes that can bypass and/or address the drawbacks of current capture technologies.

 

Biography

Dr. Rezaei’s research focuses on various aspects of chemistry and engineering of chemical adsorption, separation and reaction. During her PhD studies at Monash University, she introduced a new methodology for optimizing the structure of adsorbents being used in cyclic gas separation units, in particular in post-combustion CO2 capture process, whereby she adapted recent developments in adsorptive separation science to advance the development of new structured adsorbents which offer attractive characteristics compared to conventional packed bed systems.

Currently a post-doctoral fellow working at Georgia Tech, Dr. Rezaei is expanding her expertise in gas separation by designing next generation materials and processes for gas management in cyclic units. With an emphasis on theoretical and experimental studies, Dr. Rezaei has been actively involved in pioneering efforts to create novel materials, design advanced processes as well as develop numerical models that can be integrated into current and future separation systems.