The research of four faculty members in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University was featured in special edition publications of American Chemical Society (ACS) and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
The recent ACS virtual issue on carbon capture and sequestration technology includes, How Impurities Affect CO2 Capture in Metal–Organic Frameworks Modified with Different Functional Groups by Jiamei Yu and Dr. Perla Balbuena, GPSA Professor in the department.
“This paper uses first principles computations to explore one of the attractive features of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) —their great versatility,” said Balbuena. “Organic ligands in MOFs can be tuned to alter the adsorption of impurities with the ultimate goal of improving CO2 adsorption.”
Dr. M. M. Faruque Hasan, assistant professor, co-authored Nationwide, Regional, and Statewide CO2 Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration Supply Chain Network Optimization with three others including Dr. Christodoulos Floudas, director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute and Erle Nye ’59 Chair Professor for Engineering Excellence. The article also appears in the ACS special edition.
“We considered large databases of carbon dioxidesources and sequestration sites as well as the optimal design and screening of potential capture materials and processes,” said Hasan. “We not only obtained the minimum cost for CO2 capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), but we also uncovered several novel materials for CO2 capture for the first time.”
Added Floudas, “This is the first study reported in the literature that addresses in a quantitative way all possible trade-offs at multiple scales (i.e. macroscopic, atomistic, supply chain) and establishes the importance of tandem selection of materials, technologies and optimal processes for both individual systems and supply chain networks of CCUS.”
Dr. Hae-Kwon Jeong, associate professor and graduate recruitment admissions coordinator, published Current Status of Metal–Organic Framework Membranes for Gas Separations: Promises and Challenges that was included in I&EC Research’s inaugural virtual issue, which features a collection of most-cited papers.
“This paper was the first extensive review article on the gas separation membranes of nanoporous MOF materials, an emerging class of porous framework materials,” said Jeong. “My group, which has secured over $1.5M in research grants on this subject since 2012, is known to be one of the leading research groups on MOF membranes.”