The performance of carbon capture processes depends to a large extent on the materials used in the process, whether solvents or sorbents.
The Sargent Centre brings world-class expertise to carbon capture and runs a broad, interconnected research programme that spans material design, process innovation, dynamic operation and policy development across a range of CO2 capture settings, including for the treatment of flue gas from fossil-based power stations, blue hydrogen generation, bioenergy generation, cement manufacturing or direct air capture.
Sargent Centre researchers are at the forefront of the discovery of novel solvents and processes for the chemical absorption of carbon dioxide. They have developed the only predictive model of chemical absorption that can be used to assess the capture performance and energetic cost of thousands of solvents and solvent mixtures, including phase change solvents. This approach makes it possible to accelerate the search for novel solvents, guiding experimental towards the most promising molecules, that are predicted to achieve significant savings in energy consumption.
In collaboration with research institutes and industry across the UK and the EU, they target reductions in cost and energy consumption and the discovery of environmentally benign solvents through the combination of materials discovery and process intensification with rotating packed bed reactors. Such integrated solvent-process systems have the potential to further reduce capital and operating costs, reducing the green premium associated with carbon capture.
In collaboration with industry, Sargent Centre researchers are also developing new CO2 capture systems based on adsorption onto zeolites and novel metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Beyond economic performance, they also consider the ability of the process to handle variability in the process conditions and to operate sustainably.
