报告摘要

Global  climate change has become of worldwide concern and recently drawing continuous  attention.  This is often attributed to anthropogenic emissions of carbon  dioxide (CO₂) from energy-intensive manufacturing processes including  cement, iron, steel, natural gas production, and power generation.  Even though  renewable energy such as solar, geothermal, wind and tidal has been developing  rapidly, the energy shortage forces traditional fossil fuels to be continued  beyond 2030 in these industrial processes, which contributes up to 60% of global  fossil fuel emissions.  The high carbon content of fossil fuels is ultimately  transferred into CO₂ and released to the atmosphere.  In order to  limit the increase in temperature due to global warming below a threshold of 2°C  by 2100, carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) has become one of the  most feasible mitigation technologies.

Compared  to other mitigation strategies such as renovation of the current manufacturing  processes to improve energy efficiency and application of renewable energies,  CCUS can be implemented with less risk and uncertainty.  However, CCUS, and in  particular carbon capture, is still expensive and in order to be more  acceptable, more efficient and cheaper, capture technologies need to be  developed.  In this presentation we explore two of these.  The first is to  examine the potential of reducing the energy used in heating and cooling of  water in the traditional solvent process by examining phase change solvents.   This involves a better understanding of the thermodynamics and crystalisation  behaviour of these solvents.  The second is to explore the use of encapsulated  solvents.  This enables the consideration of a range of solvents that were  previously thought inappropriate due to poor physical properties.

Both  of these approaches illustrate potential to reduce the cost of large scale  carbon capture and so hasten its application and so reduce the influence of  CO₂ on global warming.

个人简介

Professor  Stevens is internationally recognised for his work on separations processes, he  was the Director of the Peter Cook Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage  Research, and the Director of the Particulate Fluids Processing Centre (PFPC) a  Special Research Centre of the ARC for 10 years and is a Project Leader in the  CRC for greenhouse gas remediation (CO2CRC).  He is the Australian  Representative on the International Solvent Extraction Committee and is an  Editorial of 'Solvent Extraction and Ion Exchange' and 'Chinese Journal of  Chemical Engineering’.

His  research interests are in the areas of separation processes, particularly  solvent extraction, interfacial phenomena and emulsion stability.  The research  is primarily in the hydrometallurgical field but also covers aspects of food,  pharmaceutical processing and environmental or waste water  processing.

Professor  Stevens has been named in Engineers Australia’s list of the 100 Most Influential  Engineers for 2007, 2009 and 2010.  Sponsored by Engineers Australia, the list  aims to acknowledge engineers who have a positive influence on  society.