Greenhouse Gas Removal Technologies

Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technologies can remove greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Most of the current GGR technologies focus on carbon dioxide removal, these include afforestation and reforestation, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, direct air capture, enhanced weathering, soil carbon sequestration and biochar, ocean fertilisation and coastal blue carbon. GGR technologies will be essential in limiting global warning to temperatures below 1.5°C (targets by the IPCC and COP21) and will be required to achieve deep reductions in atmospheric CO2 concentration. In the context of recent legally binding legislation requiring the transition to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, GGR technologies are broadly recognised as being indispensable.

This book provides the most up-to-date information on GGR technologies that provide removal of atmosphere CO2, giving insight into their role and value in achieving climate change mitigation targets. Chapters discuss the issues associated with commercial development and deployment of GGRs, providing potential approaches to overcome these hurdles through a combination of political, economic and R&D strategies.

With contributions from leaders in the field, this title is an indispensable resource for graduate students and researchers in academia and industry, working in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and energy policy.

Dr Mai Bui is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Environmental Policy in the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Imperial College London. She is also a member of the Centre for Process Systems Engineering (CPSE) and co-leads the Clean Fossil and Bioenergy Research Group (CleanFaB) with Dr Niall Mac Dowell. She is a Future Energy Leader at the Energy Centre of the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). She is also a committee member of the SCI Energy Group. She currently works on the Comparative assessment and region-specific optimisation of greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technologies project (funded by NERC), which studies the region-specific potential of negative emission technologies. In 2017, Mai worked on the project Multi-scale Energy Systems Modelling Encompassing Renewable, Intermittent, Stored Energy and Carbon Capture and Storage (MESMERISE-CCS), which studied the value of flexible CCS, identifying process bottlenecks along the CCS chain. In 2016, Mai completed work on the Opening New Fuels for UK Generation project. She studied the feasibility of firing biomass and biogenic waste-derived fuels (e.g., waste wood, municipal solid waste) in UK power plants. Her work focuses on developing grey-box models of the power plant and clean-up system. Mai completed her PhD at Monash University in Australia (2011-2015). She worked in collaboration with The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to study the effect of flexible operation during post-combustion capture (PCC) of CO2. Her work involved process modelling and dynamic operation of a PCC pilot plant.

Dr Niall Mac Dowell is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Energy and Environmental Technology and Policy in the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, where he currently leads the Clean Fossil and Bioenergy Research Group. He is a Chartered Engineer with the Institution of Chemical Engineers and is on the Executive Board of the IChemE’s Energy Centre, a member of the Technical Working Group of the CCSA and the ZEP on industrial decarbonisation and a member of the UKCCSRC. He currently leads a research group of 5 PDRAs, 10 PhD students all of whom are focused on technology development for climate change mitigation and has published work at the molecular, process and network scales in this context. He has given advice to DECC, the IEA, the ETI and the JRC and has travelled on behalf of the Foreign Office to China and Korea to promote low carbon power generation. He is currently the PI on the EPSRC-funded project MESMERISE-CCS and the IEA-funded project FlexEVAL and Co-I on the EPSRC-funded projects Opening Future Fuels and CCSInSupply and the UKCCSRC funded project BECCS-IL in addition to the FP7 Project CO2QUEST. He was awarded the 2010 Qatar Petroleum Prize and the 2015 IChemE Nicklin medal for research excellence in low carbon energy.