Synopsis:
Developing clean coal technologies is the objective of many stakeholders at all levels. Carbon-based fossil fuel resources comprise today about 86% of global primary energy and they are argued to be a major contributor to climate change. These fuels (liquids/gas/coal) were converted into approximately 29 billion metric tonnes CO2 in 2009 and are expected to grow to 34 and 42 billion metric tonnes CO2 by 2020 and 2035, respectively. Avoiding such CO2 emissions is seen as imperative by many governments around the World, who have underpinned the importance of this objective in transitioning into a clean energy future.
Power plants including coal-fired ones are a major source of CO2 emissions and this makes them the first point of interest in implementation of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects. The drawback of CCS technology is the huge capital and operational expenditures along with large scale integration issues. A particular daunting challenge is the capture energy penalty which must be overcome if we are to see the widespread adoption of CCS.
This talk will present research and technology development currently being conducted at the Laboratory for Multiscale Systems at the University of Sydney in this field towards deploying commercial-scale carbon capture technologies. The focus will be on solvent-based Post-combustion Carbon Capture (PCC), integration of PCC with renewable energy, Membrane-based PCC and Mineral carbonation.
Brief Biography of speaker:
Ali Abbas received both his Bachelors and PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Sydney, Australia. He held a lecturing contract at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Sydney before joining, in 2004, the new School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He was appointed, in 2007, to the lecturing position at UNSW Asia in Chemical Engineering in the Division of Engineering Science and Technology. Later in 2007, Dr Abbas returned to Sydney to take up a Senior Lectureship in the University of Sydney at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His engineering research is in the area of Process Systems Engineering with emphasis on model-based optimal operation of energy, carbon capture, particulate, and bio- systems. He has strong interests in education and teaching with particular focus on curriculum design and integration as well as on experiential e-learning and virtual worlds.
Dr Abbas holds the Australia-Harvard Fellowship and was recently awarded the Australia-China Emerging Future Leaders in Low Emissions Coal Technology Fellowship.