Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Engineering (PhD)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Chemical Engineering

Advisor 1

S. Komar Kawatra

Advisor 2

Timothy Eisele

Committee Member 1

Tony Rogers

Committee Member 2

Stephen Hackney

Abstract

As the world moves towards clean energy initiative, carbon capture and utilization technologies are key to achieving net zero emissions. CO2 capture with amines has many disadvantages and cannot be applied to commercial power plants. The current manuscript will address this issue as well as a solution that involves the use of low-cost alkali absorbent CO2 capture solutions, combined with an electrochemical regeneration method that uses the least amount of energy available for capture and regeneration. This research will also further address the issue of how to deal with the captured CO2. Several viable storage and utilization methods have been explored, as well as their technological readiness level.

The first chapter will introduce the subject and present various CO2 utilization ideas. The second chapter will cover a novel topic: adding surfactants to improve the absorption performance of a low-cost sodium carbonate solution. The third chapter will focus on capturing NOx, SOx, and CO2 using a single absorption column. In Chapter 4, we will look at how to reduce the reagent regeneration energy from 4MJ/Kg to 1.18MJ/Kg by switching from thermal regeneration to electrolysis. Chapter 5 will discuss an electrochemical approach for converting the capture CO2 to Oxalic acid. Finally, in Chapter 5, we will present pilot scale experimental studies of CO2 capture using our absorption columns at the MTU steam plant.

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