Neutrons for Earth's decarbonization
- Reference number
- SNP21-0004
- Project leader
- Nocerino, Elisabetta
- Start and end dates
- 221001-260930
- Amount granted
- 2 857 143 SEK
- Administrative organization
- Stockholm University
- Research area
- Materials Science and Technology
Summary
Climate Change Mitigation is one of the grand challenges of this century, and the achievement of stopping anthropogenic global warming needs to be pursued with both preventive and remediation approaches. This research project is focused on super-insulating cellulose based nanomaterials, suitable for minimizing-GHG emissions from built infrastructure (preventive), and on microporous carbon-based materials suitable for carbon removal from the atmosphere (remediation). The properties of such materials, usually investigated with non neutron-based methods, are currently not well understood. Therefore, the scientific challenge with them consists in clarifying their tunable fundamental physical and chemical properties, in order to optimize their performance for deployment in large-scale applications. We aim to use diverse neutron scattering characterization techniques to understand subtle structure-property relationships (e.g. moisture-dependent molecular changes, pore filling under CO2 uptake) as well as dynamic and transport properties (e.g. phonon-based thermal conductivity, CO2 and H2O mass transport) in nanocellulose and CO2-adsorbents. We also aim to observe transient effects by performing in-situ measurements under humidification, physisorption and chemisorption. The novel insight of neutron scattering is expected to provide the groundwork for a science-based design of sustainable materials for de-carbonization of the human activities with optimized properties.
Popular science description
The excessive emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) released in the atmosphere by human activities are the primary source of modern global climate change. Since 1850 the man-made CO2 emissions kept growing steadily causing a global warming of 1.3°C with respect to pre-industrial levels. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising rapidly, but temperature increases above 2°C would have irreversible catastrophic consequences for the life on Earth, so this is a hard limit. The only way to stabilize the human-induced global warming requires net anthropogenic CO2 emissions to become zero. However, the 73.2% of such emissions comes from a fossil fuel-based energy production to provide electricity, heat, and transportation and, despite massive investments in the transition to a global renewable energy system, the technological advancements do not match the energy demands of the global growing population. At this point, to stabilize the CO2 content in atmosphere at twice the preindustrial level, negative emissions need to be achieved by latest the end of the current century. This is a challenging objective to realize because our fossil-energy dependence is strong, CO2 is a stable molecule that can persist in the atmosphere for up to 1000 years, and the natural carbon sinks on Earth are not sufficient to match the necessary CO2 adsorption rates. Therefore, to solve the problem, we need to both prevent new CO2 emissions from being released and remove historical CO2 already present in the atmosphere. In this project we propose to address these two aspects by using neutron scattering experimental techniques to investigate the physical and chemical properties of nanocellulose materials, suitable for making built infrastructures energy efficient via thermal insulation, and microporous CO2 adsorbents, suitable for CO2 removal technologies such as Carbon Capture (CCS/CCU) and Direct Air Capture (DAC). Such properties need to be well understood in order to be optimized for implementation in large scale environmental technologies, and neutrons are an investigation probe with unique capabilities that are ideal to clarify them. In particular, we aim to identify the conditions to minimize heat conduction in nanocellulose materials, to obtain sustainable cellulose-based super-insulating building materials, and to understand and tune the mechanisms of CO2 capture and transport in microporous adsorbents, to achieve the most efficient and cost-effective performance.