Description:

Title: Screening and developing solid sorbents for post-combustion CO2 capture- A Process perspective

Abstract: There has been an explosive growth in the development of tailor-made adsorbents for various separations of commercial interest. Very often, the goal is to develop new materials have better metrics (e.g., selectivity, capacity) compared to previous ones. Improving these properties is assumed to result in better processes. In this talk we put these assumption to test by taking post-combustion CO2 capture through vacuum swing adsorption as a case study. The first part of the talk will deal with the development of detailed process models that are amenable to large-scale process optimization and their validation using pilot-plant results. In the second part of the talk, we explore how these models can be used for effective screening of adsorbents. We start by asking whether some of the commonly used metrics for adsorbent development do predict process performance. We perform this through detailed process design and optimization that allows us to define explicit operational (e.g, pressure levels) and process constraints (e.g., purity/recovery) and evaluate an adsorbent’s potential based on economic indicators such as energy consumption and productivity. This approach provides increased confidence in adsorbent screening and highlights some significant shortcomings of screening adsorbents based on simple metrics. Based on these results, we develop simple graphical tools that have improved prediction capabilities for screening adsorbents for post-combustion CO2 capture. Some of the insights that we have gained (confirmed by other research groups, including those at Northwestern) provide a very different perspective of adsorbent development for CO2 capture.

Arvind Rajendran is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and associate chair (undergraduate studies) in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta. Prior to his current position, he was an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Arvind completed his Ph.D. in 2004 with Prof. Marco Mazzotti from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland. His research work has resulted in over 55 peer-reviewed publications including 4 invited review/opinion articles. He serves as an assocaite editor for the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering and as an Area Editor( Adsorption Processes) for Adsorption-The journal of the international adsorption society. His research interests include, fundamentals of chromatography, supercritical fluid chromatography, and gas separation by adsorption processes. In the recent years, his group has been focussed on CO2 capture. He currently serves as director of the International Adsorption Society and is the technical chair of the Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, 2017.