Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS)
Texas A&M Energy Institute and AIR TO EARTH® Collaborate for Innovations in the Direct Air Capture of Carbon Dioxide
The Texas A&M Energy Institute and AIR TO EARTH® are pleased to announce a partnership to develop new materials and methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce the impacts of anthropogenic climate change.
The Texas A&M Energy Institute and AIR TO EARTH® will modify or design new state-of-the-art materials, called chemical sorbents, which will ideally be able to be produced at low costs, provide durable performance, and efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air. Focusing on porous polymer networks (PPNs), which show great promise for the technological feasibility and driving down the costs of DAC, the project will seek to optimize the materials, processes, and technologies that will eventually lead to an efficient, cost-effective full-scale DAC operation. In addition, the Texas A&M Energy Institute and AIR TO EARTH® will seek to optimize airflow hydraulics and carbon dioxide capture kinetics by simulating systems and methods designed to improve performance and lower the costs and energy requirements of DAC.
The team from the Texas A&M Energy Institute will be led by Stratos Pistikopoulos, the director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute and a professor of chemical engineering. Pistikopoulos is an expert in the modeling, simulation, and optimization of chemical and energy processes, with an emphasis on sustainable innovative energy solutions, process intensification, and smart manufacturing. Three additional Texas A&M professors bring diverse and extensive experience to the team:
- Mukul Bhatia, an executive professor of geology and geophysics, the director of the Berg-Hughes Center for Petroleum and Sedimentary Systems, and the Dan A. Hughes ’51 Chair.
- Faruque Hasan, an associate professor of chemical engineering and Kim McDivitt ’88 and Phillip McDivitt ’87 Faculty Fellow.
- Hongcai “Joe” Zhou, a professor of chemistry and the Robert A. Welch Foundation Chair.
The AIR TO EARTH® team will be led by Joseph Stark, the Founder and CEO of Air to Earth LLC, who has over 30 years of wide-ranging energy industry experience as a Wall Street principal investment and commodities trading executive, wind energy developer and petroleum engineer.