UA Engineering Professor Granted Patent for Carbon-Capture Process
http://uanews.ua.edu/2013/08/ua-engineering-professor-granted-patent-for-carbon-capture-process/[font face=Serif][font size=5]UA Engineering Professor Granted Patent for Carbon-Capture Process[/font]
Aug 26, 2013
[font size=3]TUSCALOOSA, Ala. An innovative method for stripping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from industrial emissions is potentially cheaper and more efficient than current methods, according to a United States patent based on research by Dr. Jason E. Bara, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at The University of Alabama.
Nearly all commercially-available efforts at scrubbing greenhouse gasses, GHGs, from emissions use a liquid solution of water and amine, derived from ammonia, that contacts the stream, removing carbon dioxide, CO[font size="1"]2[/font], or other unwanted gases. The system patented by Bara would replace much of the water in the aqueous amine solutions with a promising class of molecules known as imidazoles, organic solvents with a low vapor pressure, or boiling point.
The patent, granted earlier in August to UA, claims the chemical make-up of the imidazole-containing systems for use in capturing CO[font size="1"]2[/font] and other gases from natural gas and post-combustion emissions such as those from coal-fired power plants.
The advantages of imidazoles in carbon capture are that they are a class of solvents with tunable chemical and physical properties, Bara said. This gives us a lot of flexibility in designing a solvent system that can meet process demands.
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