Capsule technique offers more efficient option for power plant CCS

It is claimed the approach could be an important advance in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

The team, led by scientists from Harvard University, Massachusetts and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), California, employed a microfluidic assembly technique to produce microcapsules that contain liquid sorbents encased in highly permeable polymer shells. They have significant performance advantages over the carbon-absorbing materials used in current CCS technology.

The work is described in a paper published online today in the journal Nature Communications.

‘Microcapsules have been used in a variety of applications - for example, in pharmaceuticals, food flavouring, cosmetics, and agriculture - for controlled delivery and release, but this is one of the first demonstrations of this approach for controlled capture,’ said Jennifer A. Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a co-lead author.

Current carbon capture technology uses caustic amine-based solvents to separate CO2 from the flue gas escaping a facility’s smokestacks. But state-of-the-art processes are expensive, result in a significant reduction in a power plant’s output, and yield toxic by-products.