Descripció del projecte
The global reliance on fossil fuels and raw materials plays a pivotal role in powering our world. However, their extensive utilization in recent decades has led to the depletion of Earth’s resources and a substantial rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, resulting in the critical issue of global warming. This, in turn, has far-reaching consequences for ecosystems and society as a whole. Human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (around 1750) have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by over 50%, and CO2 currently stands as one of the most important pollutants for the greenhouse effect. Thus, capturing and upcycling CO2 within the paradigm of the circular economy (CE) is a challenge that needs to be urgently addressed.
In the last decades, the design of efficient capture devices to recover CO2 from combustion gases emitted in stationary industrial processes has received considerable attention. In this context, GasN2 is a company focused on the development and fabrication of CO2 capture devices based on adsorption processes, obtaining a CO2 pure enough (ca. 60%) to be employed in further industrial processes. Therefore, GasN2 has developed efficient technologies for obtaining a reliable supply of CO2 from customers in energy-intensive process industries (such as steel and cement production). At this point, the development of innovative CO2 upcycling processes is a requirement for GasN2 to expand beyond the limited CO2 reuse opportunities and offer the market solutions and services in the framework of the CE.
Since the discovery of the Sabatier reaction in 1897 (CO2 + 4H2 = CH4 + 2H2O employing Ni catalysts at elevated temperatures and pressures), the use of captured CO2 as feedstock to synthesize new carbon-based products has sparked an exponentially increasing interest across the world. Currently, the research in this field is focused mostly on the creation of innovative catalytic nanomaterials and laboratory-scale reactors to study and improve the reaction processes. The catalytic selectivity, stability and activity are critical factors for affordability and scalability in any system that uses a catalytic process for CO2 conversion to generate synthetic fuels (e-fuels) and valuable carbon-based chemicals. The ENCORE group (SGR 0106) has recognized expertise on these catalytic processes.
The hydrogen supply required for reducing CO2 also needs to be addressed from sustainability perspective. Scaling up hydrogen production from solar energy is being developed by the ENCORE group through its participation in the CER-H2 at UPC. Hence the integration of renewable energy sources that produce green hydrogen (H2) with recovered CO2, has the potential to develop efficient industrial devices to produce competitive CO2-derived chemicals and e-fuels, which can play a significant role in mitigating CO2 emissions; the carbon dioxide emitted during the consumption of e-fuels is balanced by the quantity captured during its production. This approach establishes a recycling loop, ensuring that no extra CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere.
The objective of the UPCO2FUEL project is to integrate these elements to design an innovative industrial pilot plant based on CO2 adsorption processes coupled to a catalytic reactor for the production of CO2-derived chemicals and synthetic fuels, such as methane and/or methanol among others. This technology aims to capture CO2 from an industrial combustion process and convert the captured CO2 into valuable carbon-based chemicals. The PhD project comprises a holistic study from catalyst development, catalytic reactor engineering, process modelling and simulation, scaling up of the technology and the techno-economic and environmental assessment of the process to quantify the improvement that can be attained respect current business models (BAU). Overall, the current project seeks the combination of CO2 capture and utilization with sustainable production processes employing green H2 to offer a promising solution at high TRL for reducing carbon emissions and addressing the challenges of climate change, and the training of a researcher capable of introducing this technology to different industrial applications.
