Climate Positive Energy is supporting research that assists the University, Canada and the world in reaching their Net-Zero 2050 emissions goals. In 2022, CPE supported various decarbonization projects that span from policy to technology, and in between. One of these projects, titled “Developing a carbon capturing combustor-reactor powered by hydrogen generated in-situ from thermally coupled pyrolysis of natural gas,” was being led by Professor Swetaprovo Chaudhuri at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. Subsequently, Dr. Samadhan Pawar was nominated as a Climate Positive Energy Post Doctoral Fellow due to his work to advance the combustor technology with Professor Chaudhuri.
CPE recently connected with the research team, which also includes student researchers Kartikeya Akojwar and Matthew He. Together, Professor Chaudhuri and his research team are developing a new methane pyrolysis-based system with a coupled combustor-catalytic reactor.
The system is based on a new concept combustor that is fuelled by natural gas – but captures carbon from the natural gas prior to combustion in a self-sustained manner. Simultaneously, this also enables generation of hydrogen and its immediate consumption to generate decarbonized thermal energy. The team describes this as the “Self-Decarbonizing Combustor.”
Professor Chaudhuri explains, “If you look at the current energy-climate ecosystem, combustion seems like a bad word as fossil fuel combustion is responsible for emitting carbon dioxide.” Carbon dioxide, or CO2, contributes to the greenhouse gas effect by trapping heat in the atmosphere, and is a major contributor to climate change.
Professor Chaudhuri clarifies that combustion is at its core an energy conversion process and the key process in most power generation and propulsion applications. “So, we better clean it up. I always felt that combustion can be utilized towards making CO2 free thermal energy by removing the carbon from hydrocarbons in form of soot but prior to combustion. I have been thinking about the idea of a self-decarbonized combustor for a long time”.
This research is motivated by the transition to hydrogen as an energy source, which while fast emerging as an attractive avenue to impede emissions, it is fraught with techno-economic challenges like transportation and storage. Meanwhile, transportation and storage network of natural gas is already very well developed, especially in Canada.
The combustion process creates thermal energy, or heat, which can be used to generate electricity or provide heat at homes. So what we essentially need is to decarbonize the generated heat.
“What we have tried to do here is separate the carbon from natural gas before CO2 can even be formed,” explains Professor Chaudhuri. “When you remove that carbon from natural gas, which is mostly methane, you are essentially left with hydrogen. What we are doing is heating up the natural gas to break it down into carbon and hydrogen in presence of a catalyst and then burning the hydrogen along with some hydrocarbons to produce heat– a smaller fraction of this heat is used for breaking down the natural gas while the larger fraction remains available to generate power or for process heating.”
At its current stage, the system generates approximately 41% hydrogen and mitigate roughly 26% of carbon dioxide emissions.
Kartikeya explains, “Because hydrogen is not available freely in the atmosphere like oxygen and nitrogen are, there are existing systems that generate hydrogen. However, hydrogen generation requires a lot of energy. This energy typically comes from burning fuels, so even in the process of generating hydrogen, there are CO2 emissions in most cases. Additionally, hydrogen typically also requires its own infrastructure to be stored and transported.”
“In the system that we have developed, we have internalized this energy requirement for generating and using hydrogen for cleaner combustion” says Kartikeya. “So the advantage is that we already have a well-established natural gas network, which basically means that our system can easily fit in, and we don’t need new hydrogen infrastructure specifically designed for safely transporting and storing hydrogen at the location of user, which can be far from where it is generated.” The team’s standalone system takes natural gas, which is readily available, and provides thermal energy with mitigated carbon dioxide emissions. “Furthermore, the solid carbon that is formed can be monetized, offsetting the energy penalty in preventing CO2 formation. Thus, it can potentially solve this whole decarbonization puzzle.”
Professor Chaudhuri adds that with CPE support, the team was able to advance their research and eventually build a prototype model. “The way CPE delivered this grant supporting our untested but promising technology helped us accelerate our research idea and build a system out of it in a very short amount of time.” This project is also funded by Canada Funded for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund. Professor Chaudhuri credits his research team for their diligence in advancing this work and building the lab-scale prototype.
The team has since published two papers in highly ranked journals (Proceedings of the Combustion Institute and ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power) and presented their research in two conferences over the summer: the ASME Turbo Expo in London and the International Symposium for Combustion in Milan, Italy. The technology is also patent pending. The researchers acknowledge the support and counsel of the UofT patent office.
“Attending the International Symposium was a great experience,” adds Samadhan. “We wanted to see how the combustion community takes this idea because it is a complete novel system. Most current decarbonization research has been done on burning hydrogen or capturing carbon post-combustion.” The idea was well received and garnered appreciation and constructive feedback. “This was an added motivation for me to work further.” Samadhan hopes that when people learn about the self-decarbonizing combustor, they feel inspired to work on similar systems, driving forward innovation for a greater climate impact.
Looking ahead to the future, the team has been actively trying to pursue ways in which they can take their technology from a lab scale prototype to a scalable system that they can deploy on the field. “We want to see the benefits not just for us, but for everybody else who can use this system,” says Kartikeya.
“The future is hard to predict, but if we need to solve the current crisis, we need decarbonization through systems like this,” adds Samadhan. “The scale of the problem is so large that it’s very unlikely that any single technology will be able to cover decarbonization across the board. This project has high potential to help society to solve the current crisis of decarbonization or climate change. And knowing that my work is directly going to affect or influence society – that excites me. It’s the primary motivation for me to keep doing this research.”
To learn more about this technology or connect with the researchers, contact info@cpe.utoronto.ca.
Or, connect with the researchers on LinkedIn:
- Professor Swetaprovo Chaudhuri: linkedin.com/in/swetaprovochaudhuri
- Dr. Samadhan Pawar: linkedin.com/in/samadhan-pawar-8b1aa873
- Kartikeya Akojwar: linkedin.com/in/kartikeya-akojwar