Carbon Dioxide Removal from Flue Gas Using Microporous Metal Organic Frameworks (Final Technical Report)
UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company, in collaboration with Professor Douglas LeVan at Vanderbilt University (VU), Professor Adam Matzger at the University of Michigan (UM), Professor Randall Snurr at Northwestern University (NU), and Professor Stefano Brandani at the University of Edinburgh (UE), supported by Honeywell's Specialty Materials business unit and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), have completed a three-year project to develop novel microporous metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and an associated vacuum-pressure swing adsorption (vPSA) process for the removal of CO 2 from coal-fired power plant flue gas. The project leveraged the team's complementary capabilities: UOP's experience in materials development and manufacturing, adsorption process design and process commercialization; LeVan and Brandani's expertise in high-quality adsorption measurements; Matzger's experience in syntheis of MOFs and the organic components associated with MOFs; Snurr's expertise in molecular and other modeling; Honeywell's expertise in the manufacture of organic chemicals; and, EPRI's knowledge of power-generation technology and markets. The project was successful in that a selective CO 2 adsorbent with good thermal stability and reasonable contaminant tolerance was discovered, and a low cost process for flue gas CO 2 capture process ready to be evaluated further at the pilot scale was proposed. The team made significant progress toward the current DOE post-combustion research targets, as defined in a recent FOA issued by NETL: 90% CO 2 removal with no more than a 35% increase in COE.