Novel energy efficient, amine-based catalyst-aided method for capture of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel-based industrial exhaust gas streams

加拿大从煤炭、原油特许权使用费、税收、石油租赁销售以及化石燃料工业带来的相关就业和经济活动中获得了巨大的收益。另一方面，加拿大的人均能源利用率是世界上最高的国家之一，因为加拿大是一个人口分散的北方大国。此外，目前和不断增加的大部分能源需求基本上是通过燃烧化石燃料来提供的。这些化石燃料具有高碳强度，它们的开采和加工不仅是非常能源密集型的，而且对环境也有重大影响。特别是，化石燃料的能源生产最近被证明是二氧化碳（CO2）的主要贡献者，二氧化碳是一种主要的温室气体（GHG），对气候变化和全球变暖有直接影响。例如，油砂生产、原油提炼、化石燃料发电、天然气加工等都会增加温室气体的排放，尤其是二氧化碳和其他污染物，如硫氧化物（SOx）、硫化氢（H2S）和氮氧化物（NOx）。在加拿大，二氧化碳约占温室气体排放总量的80%。挑战在于找到一种解决方案，使加拿大能够以环境可持续的方式从其化石燃料资源中受益，作为一种清洁燃料。二氧化碳捕集与封存（CCS）是解决这些问题的主要方法。然而，二氧化碳捕获的主要障碍是目前效率不高，因为能量损失和工厂规模非常大，导致二氧化碳捕获的成本很高。这项战略研究将开发一种新颖的、突破性的、改变游戏规则的基于胺的催化剂辅助技术，该技术将大大减少能源需求，并大大减少设备尺寸，从而降低二氧化碳和其他污染物从煤炭相关废气中去除的成本（以实现更清洁的化石燃料能源），使CCS的商业案例可以很容易地实现。然后，二氧化碳捕获可以基于经济效益而不是纯粹基于环境法规来实施。

Canada benefits tremendously from revenues derived from coal, crude oil royalties, taxes, and sales of petroleum leases as well as the associated employment and economic activity derived from the fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, Canada's energy utilization rate per capita is one of the highest in the world because Canada is a large northern country with a dispersed population base. Also, the majority of current and increasing energy needs is essentially supplied by combustion of fossil fuels. These fossil fuels have high carbon intensities, and their extraction and processing are not only very energy intensive, but also have a major impact on the environment. In particular, energy production from fossil fuels has recently been shown to be the key contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas(GHG), which has a direct influence on climate change and global warming. For example, oil sands production, crude oil refining, electric power generation from fossil fuels, natural gas processing, and so on contribute to an increase in emissions of GHGs, especially CO2 and other pollutants such as oxides of sulphur (SOx), hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). In Canada, CO2 constitutes about 80% of the total GHGs emitted. The challenge lies in finding a solution that will allow Canada to benefit from its fossil fuel resources in an environmentally sustainable manner as a clean fuel. CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a major component of the approaches used to address these issues. However, the main obstacle to CO2 capture is that it is currently not efficient because the energy penalty and the plant size are very large leading to a high cost for CO2 capture. This strategic research will develop a novel, breakthrough, game-changing amine-based catalyst-aided technology that will achieve a dramatic reduction in energy requirements and a large reduction in equipment size that will reduce the cost of CO2 and other pollutants' removal from coal-related exhaust gases (for achieving cleaner fossil fuel energy) to a level where a business case can easily be made for CCS. Then, CO2 capture can be implemented based on economic benefits rather than based purely on environmental regulations.