We are very excited to announce that Dr. Paige Brimley has successfully defended her PhD thesis: “Modeling electrochemical decarbonization and carbon removal technologies”! 🎉🎓🍾A very special milestone for our group, as Paige is the first PhD graduate of the Electrobuffs!⚡️🦬

Rarely do I see papers as relevant and timely as this one. Congratulations Hussain Almajed and ElectroBuffs!

Curious if it is feasible to directly integrate air contactors with (bi)carbonate electrolyzers? Our recent ACSEnergyLett paper (doi.org/10.1021/acsene…) assesses the integration from a system perspective NREL CU Boulder 🦬 TU Delft RASEI University of Colorado CU Boulder Engineering 🦬 Chemical Engineering TUDelft

While previous research in this field examined the (bi)carbonate electrolysis performance in this loop, a consistently missing piece was whether the regenerated capture solvent (electrolyzer outlet) is able to re-capture fresh CO2 from air when recycled back to the air contactor.

This idea sparked the curiosity of the team (Hussain Almajed, Recep Kas, Paige Brimley, Allison Crow, Ana Somoza-Tornos, Bri-Mathias Hodge, Tom Burdyny, and Wilson Smith) and motivated them to study the integration using a multiscale modeling framework.

One of the key takeaways from this work was the inability of the regenerated capture solution (electrolyzer outlet) to re-capture CO2 from air due to bicarbonate accumulations in the catholyte stream.

The team also recalculated the air contactor size as a function of solvent choice and concentration, quantifying the increase in contactor sizes when using K2CO3 and KOH as solvents at different concentrations. This result directly impacts the overall process economics.

Special thanks to NREL and ACSEnergyLett for enabling the article to be open-access! Finally, we welcome any feedback or question on this work. Feel free to reply to this post or send a direct message to ElectroBuffs!

May Issue of ACSEnergyLett is published today. Check out Viewpoint, Perspectives, Reviews and new advances of topics related to energy research pubs.acs.org/toc/aelccp/9/5

Huge congratulations to our spring graduates, Hunter, Paige, and Jesús! 🎓🥳👏🎊🎉

R+PM Group post-doc Avijit and his wife tragically lost their 2YO daughter in pedestrian accident last night. Two of their lab contemporaries have created a GoFundMe to assist them with this unexpected, unnecessary, and devasting loss. Please share! gofundme.com/f/support-avij…

New research in ACSEnergyLett by Hussain Almajed and colleagues examines the feasibility of using less energy in #DirectAirCapture by combining CO2 capture and recovery into one step. 🔗 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

If you are the ECS meeting this week, make sure to check out Allison's (Allison Crow) poster TONIGHT and her talk tomorrow. She will be sharing results from her recent work on bipolar membrane electrodialysis. Details below! 👇👇👇

Our recent article on (bi)carbonate electrolysis is one of the most-read ACSEnergyLett articles this past month! Check it out if you want to learn more about the feasibility of DAC integration with (bi)carb electrolysis.

Big congrats are in order for Dr. Hunter Simonson, who has successfully defended his thesis: "Device-Scale Diagnostics to Accelerate Electrolyzer Performance and Durability"! 🎉🎓🍾 Hunter is now the 2nd PhD grad from our group, and one of the very first Electrobuff members! 🦬⚡️

Now up on ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces: This work, led by Dr. Sara Hamilton (@SaraHamTriana) used in situ electrochemical atomic force microscopy (EC-AFM) to study interactions between carbon capture polymers and electrodes. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.10…

Sara completed this work NREL while visiting on a DOE SCGSR graduate fellowship (U.S. Department of Energy). Many thanks to co-authors Maria Kelly, Prof. Alissa Park, and Wilson Smith!

Hey #ACSFall2024 attendees! Welcome to our wonderful state of Colorado!🌄 While you're here, make sure to check out our group's three talks from Yuval, Wilson, and Peter. Details below 👇👇👇

What are the integration challenges and opportunities for CO2 capture, regeneration, and conversion technologies? 🤔 Find out at Hussain's poster and talk this week at the #AIChE2024 conference! Details below 👇Hussain Almajed