UCalgary research test demonstrates value of new carbon capture technology for large-scale industrial use

Calgary, AB – In the global race to roll back human impact on the climate, a research partnership between the University of Calgary and the gas separation industry has announced the game-changing results of a commercial test of a new sponge-like nano-material that captures carbon dioxide from flue gas on an industrial scale.

In the international journal Science, University of Calgary scientists, and partner company Svante, demonstrate the removal of up to 95 percent of CO₂ emitted from a cement manufacturing plant in Vancouver, B.C., dramatically scaling up and proving the value of technology a UCalgary group has been researching for eight years.

The novel sorbent material born in George Shimizu’s UCalgary lab is a highly refined version of a metal-organic framework (MOF), a class of super-absorbent materials with growing research around the world for gas separation and storage. However, what distinguishes the UCalgary technology — known as Calgary Framework 20 or CALF-20 — is its unprecedented ability to capture CO₂ on a large scale from a stream of gas containing water, says Dr. Shimizu, Ph.D., a professor whose lab in the Faculty of Science led the development of the chemistry behind the filtering compound.

“Since January, our material has been capturing one tonne of carbon dioxide a day — that’s a first for the MOF field. As far as an industrial demonstration using MOFs, this is the very first demonstration in the world.”

Dr. Shimizu, Ph.D., professor, Faculty of Science

Results have global impact for industry

The field results will be watched closely by large CO2-emitting industries such as Alberta’s energy industry, which is searching for commercially viable technologies to remove gases from emissions, thus reducing their CO2 footprint.

“Every type of gas stream with its own unique compositions and temperatures and pressures poses a different problem,” Shimizu explains. The success of the demonstration opens a promising new path for industry. “It makes it less risky for someone else to want to try this novel material at an even bigger scale. It's really trailblazing a path for this entire class of compounds.”

In the Vancouver field test, the CO2 is sequestered and reused to improve the manufacture of cement. In a parallel line of related research, Shimizu says his lab and other scientists around the world are actively exploring ways to reuse captured CO2 and other gases on a large scale for a range of new products, broadening the future application of MOFs in industry.

The scale-up of CALF-20 relied heavily on bringing together multidisciplinary expertise. “The exceptional nature of this material only becomes more apparent at higher levels of engineering testing,” Shimizu says.

 

Media inquiries

Jacqueline Sinnett
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Office of Advancement  
403-389-3476
jmsinnet@ucalgary.ca 

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