PrISMa creators aim to bridge net zero innovation’s valley of death
22 Jul 2024
It’s the phrase that encapsulates the perennial challenge of transitioning a successful laboratory project into a workable industrial venture.
The history of science is littered with examples of promising technologies and inventions that failed to make the leap from groundbreaking research into innovative applications, a conundrum dubbed the ‘valley of death’.
Today, with many scientific endeavours focused on aiding the move to greener economies and industrial practices, many net zero technologies are facing the transition challenge.
In the field of carbon capture, this includes efforts concentrated on new materials that can be employed to remove carbon dioxide from flue gasses produced by industrial processes.
Now, scientists from Heriot-Watt University have unveiled a platform named PrISMa (Process-Informed design of tailor-made Sorbent Materials) that can provide researcher with advanced simulations and machine learning to determine the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of various material-capture process combinations prior to implementation.
The platform and its associated research have been published in Nature. Project coordinator professor Susana Garcia, who doubles as associate director of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) at Heriot-Watt’s Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS) outlined:
“Chemists have proposed thousands of novel porous materials, but we did not have the tools to quickly evaluate if any materials are promising for a carbon capture process.
“Evaluating such materials requires a lot of experimental data and detailed knowledge of the capture process. And a careful evaluation of the economics and life-cycle assessment of the process.”
She explained that the PrISMa platform was a modelling tool that integrated different aspects of carbon capture, including materials, process design, economic analysis, and life cycle assessment.
Using quantum chemistry, molecular simulation, and machine learning, it can predict all the data that is needed for new materials to design a process. Otherwise, it can use experimental data from materials synthesised in a lab. The platform then evaluates performance in more than 60 case studies worldwide, Garcia said.
“This innovative approach accelerates the discovery of top-performing materials for carbon capture, surpassing traditional trial-and-error methods. The platform can also inform the different stakeholders by providing engineers with options to identify economically and environmentally challenging factors in the design phase of optimal capture technologies, molecular design targets for chemists and environmental hotspots for materials, local integration benefits for CO2 producers, and the best locations for investors,” stated Garcia.
In one example, PRISMa simulated the implementation of carbon capture technologies in cement plants located in different regions of the world. It found suitable materials for each location, halving costs compared with previous technologies. Its interactive tool also allows users to explore more than 1,200 materials for carbon capture applications.
PrISMa has been led by Heriot-Watt University in partnership with scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zurich, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley in the US, and the Institut des Matériaux Poreux de Paris in France.
