Anagrafe della ricerca

In the Paris Agreement (2015), UN member states have committed to limit global warming below 2°C versus pre-industrial levels. This implies reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 to 95 % of the 1990 level by 2050. Such an ambitious target requires to develop sustainable strategies to mitigate CO2 emissions from power conversion and energy intensive industrial processes. To pursue this goal, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) processes have been widely investigated. Among capture technologies, CO2 adsorption is receiving a lot of attention in view of its relatively low energy consumption and, with reference to CCU, the ability to produce CO2 streams with concentration and purity characteristics matching the requirements of several conversion processes such as catalytic hydrogenation to methane, methanol or dimethyl ether and liquid hydrocarbons. In recent years, the on-site combination of CO2 capture and catalytic conversion (iCCC: integrating CO2 Capture and Conversion) has been proposed as a promising approach to cope with the hurdles associated with the intermittent production and the difficult storage and transport of renewable hydrogen. Within this scenario, the MULTITOOL project will focus on the development of a novel technology of combined CO2 capture and catalytic conversion to methane. The technology will be based on the following innovative tools: -structured conductive internals, specifically conceived to improve the heat transfer performances enabling the design of adsorbers and catalytic reactors able to deal with the severe heat management issues associated both with temperature swing cycles and with temperature control in the presence of strongly exothermic processes; - integrated reactors, which combine materials with CO2 adsorption capacity with hydrogenation catalytic washcoat to be synergically operated under cycling conditions. Different process configurations will be investigated, starting from a state of the art arrangement, where CO2 adsorption and its catalytic conversion to methane are performed in separated process units, operated at independently optimized conditions and using benchmark or advanced catalytic materials, up to a fully integrated approach based on the use of a single reactor process unit able to cycle from adsorption to catalytic conversion of CO2. Such configurations will be investigated by means of mathematical model analysis, material testing and characterization, bench scale testing. The results will provide the basis for a techno-economic analysis which addresses the complete system chain, from feedstocks (Renewable Energy Sources-RES, CO2 sources, H2-delivery processes) to final Synthetic Natural Gas, by including all the steps of the processes in order to fully assess the potential of the investigated technologies in the framework of real industrial boundaries.