Background

Global climate change is caused by high and ever increasing demand for electricity and heat generated by fossil fuel combustion that emits huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Every industry and every consumer type is experiencing negative effects of climate change, including severe weather events, sea level rise, fire, flooding, drought, extinctions, species invasion, and even direct damage to infrastructure – buckling of train tracks by excessive heat. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy-related CO2 emissions increased to 33.3 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2019, up over 3.4% from 32.2 Gt in 2015. This is the wrong direction and means that every possible mitigation to remove CO2 from power generation emissions is needed, now! This technology directly addresses the urgent need to remove CO2 from large point source gas emissions, and also works for other CO2 gas separation applications, as well as for Direct Air Capture (DAC).

Technology Overview

This invention carries out ‘Reactive Absorption’, known to be the most effective type of Carbon Capture method for emissions at atmospheric pressure, such as combustion power generation.

Specifically, this invention is a special multifunctional wet filter that helps selectively remove CO2 from emission gas mixtures, which is the critical step in removing CO2 from large point source emissions.

The invention utilizes a biocatalytic textile reactive absorption technology is unique and better than conventional methods, because it dramatically improves gas-liquid contact by the high effective surface area and exceptional control of fluid flow provided by the textile, and it enables use of low energy solvents that otherwise cannot be used because of their slow reaction rates.

Enzymes immobilized on the textile surface dramatically enhance the CO2 absorption reaction rate in benign solvents, which can decrease absorber tower size – decreasing capital costs – and decrease solvent regeneration energy – decreasing operational costs.

Lowering the costs of CO2 capture will hasten its deployment.

Stage of Development

Prototype biocatalytic textile modules have been developed and tested at labscale. Proof of concept examples were included in two patent application filings and were subsequently published in peer-reviewed articles, see below.

Further Details

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c02545

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/12/10/1108

Benefits

Improved CO2 capture versus convention methods
Does not rely on high energy solvents
Allows for decreased absorber tower size, which leads to decreasing capital costs
Allows for decreased solvent regeneration energy, which leads to decreasing operational costs

Applications

This has been tested for CO2 capture, but the technology could likely be customized to capture other gasses.

Opportunity

Logical commercialization partners include global enzyme producers, domestic and global textile manufacturers, air and liquid filtration companies, gas separation engineering firms, major petrochemical companies, and smaller operations, such as biogas upgrading, that could demonstrate commercial viability at smaller scale to give confidence for larger deployment.

The NC State inventors have a strong research collbaoration with Novozymes, who supplies enzymes for this invention. They encourage our efforts and would be highly likely to supply enzymes for scale up work.

Reactive Absorption of Carbon Dioxide from Large Point Source Emissions via Biocatalytic Textile Filter

Patents

IP Status

Seeking