STTR Phase I: Supersonic Inertial Separation for Carbon Capture Technologies

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is in cryogenically capturing CO2 and H2O waste from industrial exhaust streams and converting them into sellable products. It aims to simultaneously freeze water and CO2 out of industrial exhaust streams with its unique swirling axisymmetric nozzles at locations such as power plants, manufacturing plants, and cement production. The CO2 captured using this technique can then be sold to a downstream customer looking to turn CO2 into a value-added product (e.g. CO2-to-fuel, CO2-to-building materials, etc.) and the captured water can be sold back to local municipal water systems to ease water stress in arid climates. Such an approach can reduce the deleterious impacts of industrial exhaust on local populations and enhance its commercial appeal even amid potential changes in the regulatory environment around emissions. The intellectual merit of the project lies in the design, validation, and optimization of an axisymmetric swirling flow nozzle that enables simultaneous freezing of H2O and CO2 followed by their inertial separation. At its core, the technology involves pressurization of the flue gas exhausted from an industrial source and then accelerating it out at high supersonic speeds. During this flue gas expansion, static temperature and pressure of the exhaust stream are lowered so much that the H2O and CO2 freeze into solid particles. These solid particles are heavier than the surrounding gas and can be separated from the rest of the flow by adding a strong swirling component that migrates the solid particles to the outer regions of the flow. The H2O and CO2 are then removed, and the remaining core flow passes through a power recovery turbine to reduce operational costs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.