MechE Seminar Series | Month of Energy and Sustainability: Fikile Brushett

Speaker: Fikile Brushett

Title: Towards electrochemical carbon dioxide capture using soluble, redox-active carriers

Abstract: Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture coupled with storage or utilization is projected to play a key role in enabling global decarbonization. Present-day processes employ thermochemical cycles where sorbents absorb and desorb CO2 at lower and higher temperatures, respectively. While successfully commercialized, these embodiments are energetically intensive and typically rely on fossil fuel derived heat. Alternatively, electrochemical approaches may enable lower energy CO2 separations, as electrode potentials can be modulated to selectively activate sorbents. Further, such systems enable direct integration of renewable energy sources, modular deployment, and operation at ambient conditions. While there are several promising electrochemical approaches for CO2 separation, I will focus on systems which exploit soluble, redox-active carriers with CO2 binding strengths that vary with changes in oxidation state. For these (and other systems), modeling frameworks hold value in describing key trade-offs between molecular properties, cell performance, and system design. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to develop thermodynamic, electrochemical, and techno-economic models to articulate the performance-determining relationships between constituent components, configurations, and operating envelopes of electrochemical CO2 separation systems.

About the Speaker:Fikile Brushett is the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research group seeks to advance the science and engineering of electrochemical systems that enable a sustainable future, tackling important challenges in energy storage, resource recovery, and chemical manufacturing. He has received several honors for his research, teaching, and service including the AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award (2022) and the ECS Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award (2022).