(401f) Leveraging Process Operability Mapping to Support Experimental Membrane Direct Air Capture (m-DAC) Solutions

The urge for meaningful actions toward addressing legacy CO₂ emissions has led companies to reassess their current methods of operation, and researchers to consider a number of negative emissions technologies, including CO₂ direct air capture (DAC). Capturing CO₂ directly from the atmosphere, as first suggested by Lackner (2003)[1], requires technologies that are capable of extracting it from a very dilute source (CO₂ = 420 ppm). In this presentation, a multistage membrane-based direct air capture (m-DAC) system, based on novel facilitated transport membranes, will be described to produce low-purity CO₂ (~5% CO₂). The m-DAC process is modeled considering a hollow-fiber membrane module, since hollow-fibers provide high surface area to volume ratios, therefore leading to high productivities, which are critical for direct air capture applications. A comprehensive framework for a 2-staged membrane process, designed for this purpose, and recently developed in our group[2], is leveraged in this work. The design is simulated in AVEVA Process Simulation and utilizes the process operability framework through the Python package Opyrability[3], which helps to identify the effects of input parameters such as membrane intrinsic properties and surface areas on critical output parameters such as overall recovery, purity and energy consumption (kWh/kgCO₂). Aiming to determine DAC-specific membrane parameters, an inverse design study is conducted, based on previously acquired results[2], to pinpoint the desired intrinsic characteristic values for a membrane operating at DAC conditions. Furthermore, the assessment of a hybrid process combining adsorption with the proposed m-DAC design will be explored for enhanced performance, towards enabling membrane-based solutions for direct air capture.

References

[1] - Klaus S. Lackner, A Guide to CO2 Sequestration.Science, 1677-1678 (2003). DOI:10.1126/science.1079033

[2] - Gama, Vitor; Dantas, Beatriz; Sanyal, Oishi; Lima, Fernando V.; Process Operability Analysis of Membrane-Based Direct Air Capture for Low-Purity CO2 Production. ACS Eng. Au 2024; DOI: 10.1021/acsengineeringau.3c00069

[3] - Alves, V.; Dinh, S.; Kitchin, J. R.; Gazzaneo, V.; Carrasco, J. C.; Lima, F. V. Opyrability: A Python package for process operability analysis. Journal of Open Source Software 2024, DOI: 10.21105/joss.05966