Docentföreläsning Daofeng Mei

Abstract:

Global warming is arguably the biggest challenge us humans are facing in the 21st century. The main cause has been well known for a long time: excessive use of fossil fuels in the energy system. When generating one kilowatt-hour electricity in coal-fired power plants, 950 grams of CO2 are emitted to the atmosphere. In 2023 the world produced 10373 terawatt-hours (TWh) electricity from coal combustion. Despite rapid advance in renewables, the sober reality is that this year’s carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants likely are at an all-time high.

So, while we need to accelerate deployment of renewables, we also need to have strategies to deal with a current reality and future of high fossil fuel use and also that we may overshoot temperature targets. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a valid and very promising way to prevent the generated carbon dioxide from fuel conversion of entering the atmosphere. CCS captures carbon dioxide and sequestrates it permanently on suitable sites. So, fuel-carbon is locked into closed circles where CO2 never enters the atmosphere during the extraction-utilization cycle. Several CCS technologies are under parallel developments, but most of them suffer from high energy penalties and high costs.

Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a novel and revolutionary CCS technology, which uses functional particle materials to transfer oxygen for combustion. Fuel and air are naturally and inherently separated during CLC process, so there is no burden and a low energy penalty for carbon capture. In this lecture, I will talk about this novel technology and how its small particle materials can help us to win the battle against climate change.