Carbon Dioxide Capture Research Earns Miao Yu the AIChE Neil Yeoman Award

Professor Miao Yu has recently received the Neil Yeoman Innovation Award from the AIChE for his outstanding contributions to solving energy and environmental problems using nanoporous materials. The emission of carbon dioxide (CO₂), mainly caused by the combustion of fossil fuels, has increased sharply since the 1900s, and is the most significant driver of global warming, ocean acidification, and climate change. Targeting efficient CO₂ capture from both point sources and the atmosphere, Yu’s group is engineering various nanoporous materials as the basic building blocks to design and generate unique advanced nanostructures to either selectively adsorb CO₂ (by adsorbents) or allow selective permeation of CO₂ (by membranes).

In addition to CO₂ capture/removal, Yu’s group is developing carbon conversion technologies to transform CO₂ into valuable products in an efficient, economical, and environmentally friendly manner. Specifically, Yu’s group is focused on membrane reactor (MR) technology to efficiently convert CO₂ into methanol, dimethyl carbonate, and dimethyl ether, which can be used directly as fuels or as fuel additives. The core of the Yu group’s MR technology is a microporous inorganic membrane, which allows permeation of small polar molecules, such as water (H₂O) and ammonia (NH₃), while blocking molecules as small as hydrogen (H₂). Adoption of this highly selective membrane in the reaction system was found to boost CO₂ conversion by 2-3 times.

Finally, Yu’s group is researching renewable NH₃ synthesis and H₂ production from renewable NH₃ decomposition. Although H₂ is a clean and high energy density fuel, its transportation and storage are costly.  NH₃ is a highly effective chemical carrier for H₂ that can drastically lower cost for H₂ transportation and storage. Yu’s group is focused on modular MR technology to achieve high reaction rate and conversion at moderate temperature and pressure in a compact system, that will enable easy adoption in renewable H₂ production sites at different scales. Once NH₃ is produced, transported, and stored on site, one way of using it is to convert it back to H₂. The group is therefore also working on H₂ production from renewable NH₃ decomposition. They will design, fabricate, and test a 5 kg H₂/day scale prototype and demonstrate its use in vehicles.

Other research directions in Yu’s group include crude oil separation, organic solvent nanofiltration, gas mixture separation (air separation, natural gas purification, etc.), bioseparation, and water purification.