Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UK's CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade.

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Carbon capture and storage (CCS): the way forward

This review deals with wide-ranging environmental studies of graphene-based materials on the adsorption of hazardous materials and photocatalytic degradation of pollutants for water remediation and the physisorption, chemisorption, reactive adsorption, and separation for gas storage. The environmental and biological toxicity of graphene, which is an important issue if graphene composites are to be applied in environmental remediation, is also addressed.

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Environmental applications using graphene composites: water remediation and gas adsorption

A review of solidified natural gas (SNG) technology for gas storage via clathrate hydrates

Use of monoethanolamine (MEA) for CO2 capture in a global scenario: Consequences and alternatives

Gas hydrates have received considerable attention due to their important role in flow assurance for the oil and gas industry, their extensive natural occurrence on Earth and extraterrestrial planets, and their significant applications in sustainable technologies including but not limited to gas and energy storage, gas separation, and water desalination Given not only their inherent structural flexibility depending on the type of guest gas molecules and formation conditions, but also the synthetic effects of a wide range of chemical additives on their properties, these variabilities could be exploited to optimise the role of gas hydrates This includes increasing their industrial applications, understanding and utilising their role in Nature, identifying potential methods for safely extracting natural gases stored in naturally occurring hydrates within the Earth, and for developing green technologies This review summarizes the different properties of gas hydrates as well as their formation and dissociation kinetics and then reviews the fast-growing literature reporting their role and applications in the aforementioned fields, mainly concentrating on advances during the last decade Challenges, limitations, and future perspectives of each field are briefly discussed The overall objective of this review is to provide readers with an extensive overview of gas hydrates that we hope will stimulate further work on this riveting field

Gas hydrates in sustainable chemistry

As the foundation of energy industry moves towards gas, flow assurance technology preventing pipelines from hydrate blockages becomes increasingly significant. However, the principle of hydrate inhibition is still poorly understood. Here, we examined natural hydrophobic amino acids as novel kinetic hydrate inhibitors (KHIs), and investigated hydrate inhibition phenomena by using them as a model system. Amino acids with lower hydrophobicity were found to be better KHIs to delay nucleation and retard growth, working by disrupting the water hydrogen bond network, while those with higher hydrophobicity strengthened the local water structure. It was found that perturbation of the water structure around KHIs plays a critical role in hydrate inhibition. This suggestion of a new class of KHIs will aid development of KHIs with enhanced biodegradability, and the present findings will accelerate the improved control of hydrate formation for natural gas exploitation and the utilization of hydrates as next-generation gas capture media.

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Hydrophobic amino acids as a new class of kinetic inhibitors for gas hydrate formation

Hydrophobic amino acids as a new class of kinetic inhibitors for gas hydrate

Natural gas hydrates are solid hydrogen-bonded water crystals containing small molecular gases. The amount of natural gas stored as hydrates in permafrost and ocean sediments is twice that of all other fossil fuels combined. However, hydrate blockages also hinder oil/gas pipeline transportation, and, despite their huge potential as energy sources, our insufficient understanding of hydrates has limited their extraction. Here, we report how the presence of amino acids in water induces changes in its structure and thus interrupts the formation of methane and natural gas hydrates. The perturbation of the structure of water by amino acids and the resulting selective inhibition of hydrate cage formation were observed directly. A strong correlation was found between the inhibition efficiencies of amino acids and their physicochemical properties, which demonstrates the importance of their direct interactions with water and the resulting dissolution environment. The inhibition of methane and natural gas hydrate formation by amino acids has the potential to be highly beneficial in practical applications such as hydrate exploitation, oil/gas transportation, and flow assurance. Further, the interactions between amino acids and water are essential to the equilibria and dynamics of many physical, chemical, biological, and environmental processes.

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Inhibition of methane and natural gas hydrate formation by altering the structure of water with amino acids.

The motivation for this work was the potential of hydrophobic amino acids such as glycine, l-alanine, and l-valine to be applied as thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors (THIs). To confirm their capabilities in inhibiting the formation of gas hydrates, three-phase (liquid–hydrate–vapor) equilibrium conditions for carbon dioxide hydrate formation in the presence of 0.1–3.0 mol % amino acid solutions were determined in the range of 273.05–281.45 K and 14.1–35.2 bar. From quantitative analyses, the inhibiting effects of the amino acids (on a mole concentration basis) decreased in the following order: l-valine > l-alanine > glycine. The application of amino acids as THIs has several potential advantages over conventional methods. First, the environmentally friendly nature of amino acids as compared to conventional inhibitors means that damage to ecological systems and the environment could be minimized. Second, the loss of amino acids in recovery process would be considerably reduced because amino acids are nonvol...

Kunwoo Han

Papers

Hydrophobic amino acids as a new class of kinetic inhibitors for gas hydrate formation

Hydrophobic amino acids as a new class of kinetic inhibitors for gas hydrate

Inhibition of methane and natural gas hydrate formation by altering the structure of water with amino acids.

Amino acids as natural inhibitors for hydrate formation in CO2 sequestration.

Current status and challenges of the ammonia-based CO2 capture technologies toward commercialization