STTR Phase II: Scalable Thermochemical Conversion of Carbon Dioxide to Commodity Chemical Intermediates

这个小型企业技术转让（STTR）第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是推进动态化学反应堆系统，将废气（主要是二氧化碳）重新用作燃料和化学品。这项工作可以产生重大的商业和市场影响，因为其产出与现有基础设施兼容。该项目利用了近期在碳捕获、可再生能源发电和绿色氢方面的大量投资。这项技术的一个特别有趣的应用是生产化学原料，用于从生物体中制造塑料和其他商品化学品。这本质上是向负碳制造迈出的一步。拟议的项目旨在将污染物重新用作燃料和化学品的原料。虽然可再生能源越来越多，越来越便宜，但这些技术还没有准备好用于重型运输和化学部门。尽管进行了许多基础研究工作，但目前还没有从空气或烟气中捕获二氧化碳并将其转化为增值燃料的商业规模操作。研究目标是根据第一阶段的结果扩大材料和系统的规模，并对全尺寸系统进行设计和分析。主要的进步是实现了实现高反应物转化率的动态化学反应器模块。这些结果将允许对中试规模的设施进行分析，并将这种可持续化学反应的好处转化为清洁和绿色碳氢化合物燃料和化学品的工业规模生产。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II project is to advance dynamic chemical reactor systems that repurposes waste gases (primarily carbon dioxide (CO2)) for use as fuels and as chemicals. This effort can have substantial commercial and market impacts as its output is compatible with existing infrastructure. This project leverages significant recent investments into carbon capture, renewable energy generation, and green hydrogen. A particularly interesting application of this technology is the production of chemical feedstocks that are used to make plastics and other commodity chemicals from living organisms. This is inherently a step towards carbon negative manufacturing. The proposed project aims to re-purpose pollutants to a feedstock for fuels and chemicals. Although renewable energy sources are increasing and becoming cheaper, these technologies are not ready for heavy-duty transportation and chemical sectors. No commercial scale operation is in existence in which CO2 is captured from the air or flue gas and converted to value-added fuels despite much fundamental research effort. The research objectives are to scale up the materials and system from the Phase I results and conduct a design and analysis of a full-scale system. The main advance is to achieve dynamic chemical reactor modules that achieve high reactant conversions. These results will permit analysis of a pilot-scale facility as well as translation of the benefits of this sustainable chemical reaction toward industrial scale production of clean and green hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals.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.