The impact of CO2 emissions on global warming has stimulated tremendous research and industrial activities to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change. The innovation in this project is that it will use simple and robust CaO-based materials for CO2 capture and utilisation. By modifying CaO-based sorbent, over 95% CO2 conversion could be achieved. To the best of our knowledge, integration of CO2 capture and utilisation has not yet been tested on a pilot scale anywhere in the world.
Current state-of-the-art of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) has a few steps, including CO2 capture, CO2 storage, CO2 transportation and CO2 conversion; thus CCU has relatively low energy efficiency with high cost. Direct Air Capture (DAC) represents a promising technology for reduction of CO2 emissions. However, DAC technologies are very expensive to run and require a large amount of energy. Novel concepts and processes are needed to reduce the cost of DAC and enhance energy efficiency. Thus, this project proposes a novel integrated DAC and CO2 utilisation (i-DACCU), using novel materials. The solution intensifies CO2 capture, sorbent regeneration and CO2 utilisation, reducing process steps and overcoming conventional thermodynamic limitations of CO2 conversion. The project will have 3 Project Stages (PS), including materials development, characterisation, testing for DAC and integrated DAC with CO2 utilisation, mechanism studies for fundamental understanding, critical results analysis and discussion, and reporting.