April 8 in HH 202 Dr. Klaus Lackner presenting What to Expect from a Good Sorbent for Pulling Carbon Dioxide Out of the Air

Join this seminar from Dr. Klaus Lackner on Wednesday April 8 at 9am in Hill Hall 202 on What to Expect from a Good Sorbent for Pulling Carbon Dioxide Out of the Air

There appears to be a consensus that sorbent development lies on the critical path for most direct air capture technologies. A wide range of very different sorbents have been proposed and studied. They differ widely in their chemical structures, in the chemistry or physics of their CO2 binding, and in their physical properties. In order not to lose the big picture, it might be time to step back and ask what is required of a good sorbent and which of these properties are still lacking. I will make the case that for direct air capture most basic sorbent requirements are already met, that process engineering may be more important to advancing the technology, and that for sorbents the real limitations of cost, manufacturability, durability and environmental safety are under-researched compared to sorbent capacity, internal surface area, thermodynamics and kinetics. Another blind spot in sorbent research has been the interaction with water which is ubiquitous in ambient air.