Current Research on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies at National Energy Technology Laboratory

Janice Steckel, PhD, Research Scientist at United States Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory

Abstract
Carbon capture plays an important role in many scenarios for mitigation of the effects of climate change. Research at NETL has expanded from point source carbon capture to include methods for capturing carbon directly from air. As part of this expansion, a new research group has been formed to focus on carbon dioxide removal while point source capture research continues as well.

At NETL, we have developed a carbon capture sorbent based on a functionalized porous polymer. This material has several advantages over widely used powder sorbents including fast kinetics as well as the fact that it can be shaped in many ways and does not need to be bound to a contactor or made into pellets.  In our research portfolio, we have focused on the development of a direct air capture technology to be designed based on the strengths of this polymer capture material. Recent computational and experimental results on carbon capture materials will be presented.

Bio-Sketch
Jan Steckel earned her PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2001 where she studied electronic structure theory and density functional theory methods with Professor Ken Jordan.  She carried out post-doctoral work at the University of Vienna where she worked with Georg Kresse and studied surface reactions on diamond and platinum.   In 2002 she joined NETL as a National Research Council fellow.  She is the co-author, with David Sholl, of the popular book ‘Density Functional Theory: A Practical Introduction’. Since 2012 she has applied computational methods materials development carbon capture. She has served as the Technical Task Coordinator for computational tasks in the Carbon Capture research portfolio and as the Technical Project Lead for the Carbon Dioxide Removal research portfolio.