Left to right: Chris Pin Harry, VP Technology, Industrial & Energy Technology at Baker Hughes; Professor Jefferey Long, UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry and Executive Director of the new research center; and Daniela Abate, VP CCUS, Climate Technology Solutions at Baker Hughes.
As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to rise, and efforts to cut new emissions fall short of targets, Berkeley scientists are teaming up to combat carbon pollution in a different way: by developing new materials that can adsorb carbon dioxide and other pollutants from exhaust gases and even directly from air.
The Baker Hughes Institute for Decarbonization Materials has launched with funding from the energy technology company Baker Hughes. The funds, distributed over multiple years, will support Berkeley researchers working to pull chemicals from industrial emission streams and the atmosphere as well as the scientific training and professional development of more than fifty graduate students and postdoctoral researchers across diverse scientific fields.
“Despite the fact that climate change is accelerating, we still get most of our energy from burning fossil fuels, which puts carbon dioxide and other chemicals into the air,” says David Harris, the managing director of the Baker Hughes Institute for Decarbonization Materials. “One way to combat this is to construct new materials that can selectively take the carbon dioxide out of air—whether that is from the exhaust at a power plant or the atmosphere.”
In recent years, the idea of removing carbon dioxide from the air – often dubbed “direct air capture”—has gained scientific attention as a method of fighting climate change. Methods of DAC range in how they work and how effective they are.
C. Judson King Distinguished Professor and Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Long, who will lead the Institute as the director, has pioneered the use of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) for adsorbing carbon dioxide and other molecules including hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitric oxide and sulfur gases from atmospheric and industrial sources. Once these gases are adsorbed by the MOFs, the gases can be removed and sequestered or used in other chemical reactions.
“These materials have a special chemical composition that lets them act like sponges to soak up carbon dioxide,” Harris explains.
One promising material developed by Long’s lab was spun off into the startup company Mosaic Materials, which was then acquired by Baker Hughes in 2022. The technology is now being tested by Baker Hughes for atmospheric carbon capture. A related MOF material that works at higher temperatures and has potential for exhaust gas CO2 capture, was described by Long’s team in November in Science.
“When you burn fossil fuels to spin turbines and generate electricity, you’re doing this at very high temperatures,” Harris says. “Most porous materials don’t work to capture carbon at those temperatures of more than 200 degrees Celsius. We have one now, so that is pretty revolutionary.”
But Long, Harris and their colleagues think there is room for more development of materials. That’s where the institute comes in. They’ll be trying to make materials that not only adsorb gases more efficiently but can also release the gases without high energy requirements.
“To develop these materials is really a complex and multidisciplinary problem,” Harris points out. “As chemists, we know how to go in there at the atomic level and adjust the materials, but we also need physicists, materials scientists, and engineers who can scale the technology.”
The new institute will allow researchers and trainees to develop and test new MOFs. Importantly, it will involve industrial collaboration with Baker Hughes from the earliest stages of research, to shape what type of pollution removal is most needed and most apt to be commercialized – such as methods that can remove carbon dioxide from power plants or steel and cement production facilities before the pollution hits the atmosphere.
“What’s unique about our approach is that we are in the lab doing fundamental science, but Baker Hughes is there throughout the process to offer advice and make sure it’s relevant for what is needed.”
While lowering carbon dioxide levels from the atmosphere – and lowering current emissions— is an urgent task, the institute’s scientists are up for the challenge. Over the next several years of initial funding for the institute, Long and Harris are confident they can make scalable, commercially relevant materials that can quickly hit the market and make a difference.
“There are a lot of people around the world working on this, but at Berkeley we already have some of the best materials and scientists who are willing to work together.”