Director at Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center and Professor at Stanford University, USA
In this plenary, Alfred Spormann will present the issues of carbon capture and conversion into useful material or storage and he will address some of the challenges in implementing new technologies on a large scale.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center is a new, mission‐oriented Center with the purpose to develop novel science for CO2 capture and CO2 conversions for storage or utilization to replace fossil carbon and fossil fuel‐intensive processes with sustainable, CO2‐based technologies.
There will not be a single winning technology, and many different solutions are necessary. Therefore, the center pursues distinctively collaborative approaches between the chemical and life sciences. Integrated solutions are needed that make use of the best of the science and with a full, scalable technology platform in mind, to develop technical platforms that are tunable to local resources, regulatory settings, and expertise.
The research focus is on direct CO2 capture from air, microbial/chemical conversion of CO2 to C1-8 compounds, homogeneous, heterogeneous, and enzyme catalysis for CO2 capture and conversions, electrochemical reductions of CO2 and CO2-derived multi-carbon compounds and novel carbonate (bio)chemistries for CO2 capture and conversion.
The technical approach is be supported by advanced systems‐level modeling and simulations connecting scalable CO2 and carbon technologies with energy and other resource processes.
Alfred M. Spormann is a microbial physiologist and biochemist. He has been a Professor at Stanford University for the past 28 years in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, and of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as of Biology, and of Geological and Environmental Sciences.
Primary research interest is on metabolism, in particular on CO2 metabolism, of anaerobic microorganisms. The research group has been studying extensively acetogenic bacteria, methanogens, and chain-elongating bacteria including for direct and indirect electron uptake via electrosynthetic systems.
Currently he is the Executive Director Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center (CORC) at Aarhus University.
Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, USA
Chemical synthesis is responsible for significant emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide. These emissions arise not only due to the energy requirements of chemical synthesis, but since hydrocarbon feedstocks can be overoxidized or used as hydrogen sources. Using renewable electricity to drive chemical synthesis may provide a route to overcoming these challenges, enabling synthetic routes which operate at benign conditions and utilize sustainable inputs. We are developing an electrosynthetic toolkit in which distributed feedstocks, including carbon dioxide, dinitrogen, water, and renewable electricity, can be converted into diverse fuels, chemicals, and materials.
In this presentation, we will first share recent advances made in our laboratory on nitrogen fixation to synthesize ammonia at ambient conditions. Specifically, our lab has investigated a continuous lithium-mediated approach to ammonia synthesis and understood the reaction network that controls selectivity. We have developed non-aqueous gas-diffusion electrodes which lead to high rates of ammonia synthesis at ambient conditions. Then, we will discuss how water can be used as a sustainable oxygen-atom source and how carbon dioxide can be used to achieve carbon chain extension. These findings will be discussed in the context of a broader range of electrosynthetic transformations which could lead to local and on-demand production of critical chemicals and materials.
Karthish Manthiram is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. The Manthiram Lab is focused on the molecular engineering of electrocatalysts for the synthesis of organic molecules, including pharmaceuticals, fuels, and commodity chemicals, using renewable feedstocks. Karthish received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2015. After a one-year postdoc at the California Institute of Technology, he joined MIT as an Assistant Professor in 2017. In 2021, he moved to Caltech as a Full Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Karthish’s research has been recognized with several awards, including the DOE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers 35 Under 35, American Chemical Society PRF New Investigator Award, Dan Cubicciotti Award of the Electrochemical Society, and Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science. Karthish’s teaching has been recognized with the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, C. Michael Mohr Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, the MIT Chemical Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and the MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award. He serves on the Early Career Advisory Board for ACS Catalysis and on the Advisory Board for Trends in Chemistry.
Separation and Conversion Technology, Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium
In 2015, the European countries signed the Paris agreement to keep the global temperature increase well below 2.0 °C. To do so, power-to-X technologies are needed to produce many of the valuable chemicals and fuels that we have obtained from fossil sources for generations. In this presentation, I will discuss how and when power-to-X fits into the green transition of Europe. How the need for power-2-X depends strongly on the level of climate ambition, and how we might create green bubbles where the technology can mature.
Dr. Deepak Pant is a senior scientist at Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium working on electrosynthesis and resource recovery, specifically, design and optimization of (bio)electrochemical systems for CO2 conversion and microbial electrosynthesis. He has a PhD in environmental biotechnology and has 180 peer-reviewed publications (h-Index 71), 6 books, 6 patents and 38 book chapters to his credit. His expertise lies in CO2 conversion, sustainable chemistry, electrocatalysis, microbial fuel cells, bioenergy and bioeconomy. He is Editor of Bioresource Technology Reports and Editorial board member of Bioresource Technology, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, iScience, Scientific Reports, Molecules, WJMB.
Homepage: www.deepakpant.eu
Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, Aarhus University
Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT, Finland
Haldor Topsøe & Aarhus University
Senior Scientist at Topsoe, Denmark
With increased production of electricity from solar and wind farms, the need for efficient and large-scale energy storage become paramount. One promising solution is the combination of solid oxide electrolysis and catalytic methanation. Operational data is presented from a 50 kW Haldor Topsoe SOEC unit using eight stacks in two stack assembly units. The electrical conversion in the SOEC is close to 100 % and the proven synergies clearly show why SOEC- and catalytic methantion-technologies should be combined in future biogas upgrading facilities.
Department for Materials Synthesis, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia
Department of Industrial Chemistry, Università di Bologna, Italy
Professor at Science Institute, University of Iceland
Associate Professor at Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University, USA
Osaka Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, Japan
National Institute of Chemistry, Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering, Slovenia
Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, Aarhus University, Denmark
Dutch Institute For Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER), The Netherlands
Doctoral Researcher, Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki, Finland
Department of Energy Conversion and Storage, DTU, Denmark
Carbon and energy catalysis (C2CAT), Netherlands
Department of Chemical Science, University of Limerick, Ireland
Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT, Finland
Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering, National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia
Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Science Institute, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland.
Jožef Stefan Institute, Synthesis of Materials, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology (DBI)
Aarhus University, BCE
Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, Aarhus University
