Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Scalable and affordable CO2 capture is needed to meet climate goals, prompting exploration of approaches beyond thermally and electrically-driven ones. Light-driven CO2 capture using photoacid molecules leverages light to drive CO2 sorbent regeneration, expanding the energy input basis available for carbon capture. Here, we combine bench-scale experiments with process modeling to identify the molecular and process conditions required to scale up light-driven CO2 capture. We reveal that raising the photoacid concentration 100-fold relative to previous demonstrations to >0.3 M would enable >90% CO2 recovery and reduces the electricity demand by an order of magnitude compared to a state-of-the-art amine-based CO2 capture process from a cement plant. This performance gain highlights the promise of light-driven CO2 capture and reveals key targets for further research: improving photoacid solubility and stability to achieve cyclability and near-molar concentrations and optimizing the process design to efficiently handle practical CO2 streams. These findings provide a roadmap for advancing light-driven CO2 capture from proof of concept towards a scalable carbon management technology.
Source: ChemRxiv
Authors: Anna de Vries, Lisa Rueben, Philipp Rehner, Hendrik Schricker, Laura Henz, Hippolyte Robin, André Bardow, Maria R. Lukatskaya
Institutions: ETH Zurich, RWTH Aachen University, Technical University of Munich
Language: English
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4412946759