The ChE seminar series features guest speakers. U-M ChE faculty and graduate students are especially encouraged to attend.

TITLE:
"Development and Deployment of Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs): Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO2 as Humanity’s Moonshot for the 21st Century"

ABSTRACT:
Worldwide energy demand is projected to grow strongly in the coming decades. Even with unprecedented growth rates in the development of renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and bioenergy, the world will continue to rely on fossil fuels as the predominant energy source for at least the next decade. Simultaneously, due to decades of inaction, current climate models as well as the recent IPCC AR6 Climate Change Report state that limiting warming to <2°C will require large scale deployment of negative emissions technologies (NETs). NETs, which remove CO2 from the atmosphere, are projected to be needed at a scale of 10 Gt/y by 2060, yet today, virtually none have been deployed. NETs may be natural or technological, with one of the most scalable technological approaches being the direct capture of CO2 from the air, or “direct air capture” (DAC). Because of the ultra-dilute nature of air, the separation of CO2 from this mixture presents a significant engineering challenge.

In this lecture, I will describe the design and synthesis, characterization and application of supported amine materials that we have developed as cornerstones of new technologies for the removal of CO2 from ultra-dilute (air) gas streams. These chemisorbents efficiently remove CO2 from simulated flue gas streams, and the CO2 capacities are enhanced by the presence of water, unlike the case of physisorbents such as zeolites. We will describe the development of these materials, how they integrate into scalable DAC technologies, as well as their key physicochemical structure-property relationships. DAC technologies offer an interesting case study for the parallel design of materials, unit operations, and processes in chemical engineering. Contemporary challenges in DAC will be discussed.

BIO:
Professor Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. After earning a BSE in Chemical Engineering from Michigan and MS & PhDs from Caltech, he joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 2000. There he rose through the faculty ranks to his current position as School Chair, including service as Associate Vice President for Research from 2013-2019, and a period as Interim Executive Vice-President for Research in 2018.

Dr. Jones leads a research group that works on materials, catalysis and adsorption. He is known for his extensive and pioneering work on materials that extract CO2 from ultra-dilute mixtures such as ambient air, which are key components of direct air capture (DAC) technologies. He served on the National Academies Consensus Study on Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration in 2017-2018, focusing on DAC.

He also has produced an extensive body of work in catalysis. Dr. Jones was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and is Vice-President of both the North American Catalysis Society and the International Adsorption Society. He was tapped in 2020 to launch the new open access American Chemical Society journal, JACS Au. (Read as Jacks Gold)

Jones’ work in both catalysis and CO2 separation has been recognized with awards from numerous organizations including the ACS, ASEE, AIChE and the North American Catalysis Society. Georgia Tech has recognized Jones as the Institute’s Outstanding Faculty Research Author (2011), for Research Program Development (2012) and for Research Innovation (2021). In 2022, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.