Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Carbon Dioxide Utilization (CarbonUSE)

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。计划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是为了在团队之间建立能力，以计划集中的、中心规模的工程研究。这笔规划赠款将通过以下方式为未来的二氧化碳利用工程研究中心制定精心制定的计划：(A)使面子？在规划研讨会上，不同的学术专家和行业领袖进行面对面的互动，(B)建立产业联盟，(C)实现跨学科更深入和更紧密的融合。面对面研讨会将在团队成员之间建立个人和专业层面的凝聚力/协调互动，从而使学科领域内和学科领域之间的有机协作能够实现统一的愿景和目标。提供专门的规划资源将在团队内部创造势头，帮助创建一个不断提升和引人注目的议程。这将凝聚并激励团队开发宏伟的解决方案，以应对二氧化碳管理的重大挑战。该项目有可能促进以下方面的知识：(A)二氧化碳与吸附剂、膜和催化剂的分子级别相互作用，以利用缺陷、无序、界面和异质性等属性来控制和提高反应速率，以及(B)合作现象(例如，基于结构转变)如何减少二氧化碳捕获和转化过程的外部能量需求，从而提高过程效率。这些进展将允许利用复杂的电子和原子关联来设计和控制材料，并制造分层结构，以实现一个共同的目标：具有成本效益的二氧化碳捕获和转化。该项目将实现10亿吨级二氧化碳排放的升级循环(有益利用)，并将使美国成为这一新兴领域的世界领先者。建立这种破坏性的二氧化碳转移途径是推动碳转化为价值的经济的创造和成功以及减缓气候变化速度的先决条件。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research. This planning grant will develop well-formulated plans for a future Engineering Research Center for Carbon Dioxide Utilization by: (a) enabling face? to-face interactions among diverse academic experts and industry leaders at planning workshops, (b) building industrial alliances, and (c) achieving deeper and more closely integrated convergence across disciplines. The in-person workshops will establish cohesive/coordinated interactions among team members, both at a personal and professional level, thereby enabling organic collaborations within and across disciplinary domains to fulfill a unified vision and goals. The provision of dedicated planning resources will create momentum within the team, helping to create an ascending and compelling agenda. This will cohere and motivate the team to develop grand solutions to the grand challenges of C02 management.This project has the potential to advance knowledge in (a) molecular-level interactions of CO2 with sorbents, membranes, and catalysts to exploit attributes such as defects, disorder, interfaces, and heterogeneity to control and enhance reaction rates, and (b) how cooperative phenomena (e.g., based on structural transitions) can reduce the extrinsic energy needs of CO2 capture and conversion processes, thereby improving process efficiencies. These advances will allow exploitation of complex electronic and atomic correlations to design and control materials, and the fabrication of hierarchical structures toward a common goal: the cost-effective capture and conversion of CO2. The project will allow for upcycling (beneficial utilization) of CO2 emissions at the gigaton scale and will position the U.S. as the world leader in this emerging domain. The institution of such disruptive offtake pathways for CO2 is a prerequisite for empowering the creation and success of the carbon-to-value economy and retarding the rate at which the climate is changing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.