Master Thesis Project with TATA steel

Integrated CO2 capture and electrochemical conversion – modelling and technoeconomic analysis study

Focus of the work: Aspen modelling and techno-economic analysis
Daily supervision: Iris Burgers (i.a.e.burgers@tudelft.nl)
Supervisors: Prof. Earl Goetheer, Dr. Ruud Kortlever, Peter van den Broeke (TATA Steel)

Project Description
The concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are at critically high values, causing severe stress on our climate. It takes many years before CO2 is naturally removed from the atmosphere. Therefore, in mitigating climate change, it is, among other things, of significant importance to remove CO2 from our atmosphere. This can be done by capturing the CO2 directly from the air or by capturing CO2 from flue gas streams from industries that will continue to use fossil fuels in the near future.
It is possible to increase the value of the captured CO2 by electrochemically reducing the CO2 into other chemical products. In this process, electricity is applied to an electrochemical cell, initiating the reduction of CO2 to produce e.g. carbon monoxide, ethylene, and/or ethanol.
Currently, both capture and electrochemical conversion of CO2 is studied independently, but what if we could integrate the capture of CO2 directly with an electrochemical processing method? An integrated system would eliminate the energy intensive desorption step required in the capture process of CO2. Furthermore, instead of having CO2 as output, it will be possible to have valuable chemicals as output. The number of steps in the system is reduced and thus economically the process will be more attractive.

As of yet, there is limited research done on the full process design. In this project we would like to find out how this process can be optimized for industrial application, which upstream and downstream processes are required to obtain the desired products, and how this could be made techno-economically feasible.
The project is part of the NWO RELEASE consortium, which focuses on large scale energy storage systems. This is a collaboration project with TATA steel as industrial partner of RELEASE and will be supervised by both TU Delft and TATA steel.

Project Objectives
The thesis project will focus on the modelling of the integrated CO2 capture and electrochemical reduction process.
– Literature study on the integrated CO2 capture and conversion
– Modelling the integrated CO2 capture and electrochemical conversion process, including upstream and downstream process.
– Techno-economic analysis of the integrated process

We are looking for a motivated MSc student who has an affinity with modelling and process design, and with an interested in the CO2 capture and conversion field and techno-economics.

What’s in it for you? You will get the opportunity to work as in intern at TATA steel and be involved in a multidisciplinary research group TU Delft. You will get the opportunity to become an expert on the CO2 capture and conversion technologies and set the boundaries for the novel integrated process design.

For more information, please contact Iris Burgers.