Intra/Inter-Molecular Hydrogen Bonding Stabilized, Amino Acid/peptide Modified Redox-active Sorbents for Electrochemical Carbon Dioxide Separation

High Affinity, Redox-Active Sorbents for Electrochemical Carbon Capture

JHU Ref #: C17628

Unmet Need

In recent years, global carbon emissions have increased dramatically. Even with renewable energy sources, carbon capture is seen as the only practical method to reduce industrial emissions to meet short term criteria for preventing global warming. Yet, the standard temperature and/or pressure-based carbon separation technology still finds difficulty in implementation due to low energy efficiency and lack of flexibility and modularity. While electrochemical carbon separation provides a promising solution, actual implementation has been scarce due to low capture rates. Therefore, there exists a need for a flexible and effective method to address the current drawbacks of electrochemical carbon capture.

Value Proposition:

• Achieves effective redox potential tuning with minimum impact on CO2 binding through a unique molecular design that allows for higher overall binding affinity than previous redox methods, leading to more effective and high capacity carbon capture and recovery.
• Ability to further tune the sorbent’s physiochemical properties through addition of different types biological molecules.

Technology Description

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have developed a high affinity, redox-active sorbent for electrochemical carbon capture. The affinity of the sorbent for CO₂ can be modified by electricity to reversibly change from a high affinity state to low affinity state to capture and release CO₂. Furthermore, the technology bypasses limits of previous sorbents by tuning the molecular binding interfaces to increase tolerance for oxygen, while maintaining CO₂ binding affinity.

Stage of Development

Technology is at the R&D stage. Inventors are currently optimizing design of the redox-active CO₂ sorbents and testing performance with bench-scale prototypes.

Data Availability

Data available upon request.

Publication

Redox-tunable isoindigos for electrochemically mediated carbon capture (nature.com)