Modelling for Sorbent Based Direct Air Capture Systems

Abstract

In this thesis, the first part will be a review of the literature that includes as much of the commercially available information on carbon capture and mainly, Direct Air Capture (DAC). What are the difficulties surrounding capturing CO2 from gas mixtures and what are the possible solutions that have been investigated? What type of negative emission technologies have been proposed, what are the important parameters for the design of carbon removal technologies and what are the biggest obstacles that need to be overcome? Gathering sufficient data and comparing the different finding will be of importance, given that DAC technologies are still in developing stages and information is limited. The focus of this thesis will be on chemically amine based solid sorbents, as this can be argued that this is the most promising technology for a viable DAC system.

The modelling part of the thesis will be focused on the design of and development of a DAC model in the open source software ’Python’. The amine based sorbent that is investigated and used for the creation of the model is Lewatit VP OC 1065. Using experimental data gathered from the literature together with feasible assumptions, a model will be built to recreate the the whole DAC process and analyse the system. The main focus will be on acquiring a flexible model for both the adsorption and desorption parts of the DAC process to make further investigation of the system parameters possible. This model will be used after this thesis for further development and, for instance, analysing different possible sorbents.