CO₂ Adsorbents

CO₂ emissions are considered to be a major contributor to global warming among all the Earth’s radiative-forcing components. Many countries are accelerating their drive to combat climate change with a significant focus on the power generation sector—the source of 40 % of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. In the EIA’s 2018 Annual Energy Outlook (Feb 2018), it’s reported that energy-related CO₂ emissions from industry grow 0.6 % a year, and more than 5 billion tons of CO₂ are released every year to the atmosphere for the next three decades or more.

ADEM has developed lithium-ceramic-based CO₂ adsorbents with a high CO₂ removal capacity (0.4 g g-1) across a wide temperature range and with a fast regeneration process. These CO₂ adsorbent products and their patented scalable manufacturing methods can lead to highly efficient CO₂ removal from stationary sources with substantial energy savings—crucial for industrial facilities in the U.S. and the state of Kentucky as they work toward globally competitive emission-reduction technologies.

CO₂ Conversion to Chemicals: CO and Methanol

CO₂ utilization offers an economical solution to the global challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in creating a new circular economy for recycling CO₂. CO₂ to methanol conversion offers a promising route to reduce emissions, but its use as a feedstock remains a challenge. ADEM’s technology has significant potential to deliver a step change in the future for CO₂ utilization and to radically transform the chemical and energy industry.

ADEM demonstrated its plasma catalytic technology “PlasCat™” for economical and energy-efficient conversion of CO₂ to CO and methanol. During Phase I of the project, techno-economic feasibility of PlasCat™ technology was shown to convert CO₂ in two major pathways: First, a plasma-catalysis scheme was demonstrated for CO₂ to CO conversion using hydrogen. Second, a plasma catalytic process exhibited a synergistic effect with efficient conversion of a tri-reforming reaction involving CO₂, H₂O and CH₄ to produce syngas at a desired H₂/CO ratio of about 2.2. ADEM also demonstrated a bimetallic catalyst for syngas to methanol at low pressures of 20 bar with much higher conversion than the state-of-the-art commercial catalyst. Plasma catalytic studies involving CO₂ with higher amounts of hydrogen exhibited a 3 % methanol yield and overall CO₂ conversion around 60 % at atmospheric pressure.

In Phase II of the project, ADEM will optimize and scale up the processes using a unique plasma flame integrated with a fluidized-bed catalytic reactor. Studies will focus further on developing two mini-GTL solutions: (i) customize the process to produce pure CO using an appropriate H₂/CO₂ ratio and offer on-site, on-demand production of CO, or customize to produce methanol by adding additional hydrogen; (ii) develop a mini Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) process involving tri-reforming of CO₂, H₂O, CH₄ and O₂ in a plasma catalytic reactor to produce syngas along with methanol and further process the syngas into methanol. The mini-GTL technology offers the use of abundant methane and water for the required hydrogen. Major objectives of Phase II include optimization and demonstration of the scalability of both solutions and a detailed techno-economic competitiveness and carbon-footprint life-cycle analysis for a mini-GTL plant to produce roughly 5 000 tons per year of methanol.

Commercial Applications

PlasCat™ technology allows economical routes for conversion of CO₂ to value-added fuels and chemicals such as methanol and CO at low pressures. The technology can also be implemented at a mini-GTL scale by directly using CO₂-rich exhausts from certain industry segments, enabling on-demand CO production and related applications.