Abstract: In the last 20 years, significant efforts have been invested in developing adsorption processes for CO2 capture. The explosion in adsorbent synthesis and molecular simulations has resulted in the generation of hundreds of thousands of (hypothetical & real) adsorbents, e.g., Zeolites, Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs). This excitement seems to have led to an implicit assumption that the key bottleneck in developing large-scale adsorption processes is discovering the right adsorbent. Recent studies have demonstrated that the performance of an adsorbent is intimately linked to the process in which it is deployed, and any meaningful screening should consider the complexity of the process. The talk will have two parts.

Part 1. Post-combustion CO2 capture on the hydrophobic MOF, CALF-20: The first part of the talk will deal with a recent collaborative work that reported the synthesis, characterization, molecular modelling and process scale-up of Calgary framework-20 (CALF-20) for industrial post-combustion CO2 capture [1]. We will focus, specifically on the process characterization of CO2-H2O competition through dynamic column breakthrough studies, process modelling and experimentation of vacuum swing adsorption-based CO2 capture from dry and wet feed.

Part 2. Process Engineering for screening & optimization: This second part will focus on recent modelling and machine learning developments that have allowed us to screen large MOF databases and develop achievable separation/cost targets for adsorption with other technologies. These techniques have allowed us to understand the interplay between processes and materials. The talk will focus on Pressure-Vacuum Swing Adsorption for post-combustion CO2 capture. It will be based on our recent work related to the screening of adsorbents [1], machine-learning models for process optimization [2,3,4] scale-up and costing [5]. 

Biography: Arvind Rajendran is a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Alberta. He received his PhD from ETH Zurich. He started his academic career at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and moved to the University of Alberta in 2012. Between 2016 and 2020, he served as an associate editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering and as an area editor of Adsorption- the journal of the International Adsorption Society (IAS). He is an elected director of the IAS and also served as the technical chair of the 2017 Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference. He has co-authored over 85+ and advised 45+ highly qualified personnel (MSc+PhD+Post-doc). His research group focuses on adsorptive gas separations with applications in CO2 capture, direct air capture, oxygen purification and helium separation.