Recently the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $64.7 million in funding for projects focused on producing cost-effective, low-carbon biofuels. These research and development investments are seeking to advance technologies that create replacements for petroleum fuels used in heavy-duty transportation and accelerate a path to a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
Researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) were selected for a $2.3 million in funding as a part of this DOE program. UVA Chemistry Professor Sen Zhang, and Engineering Professors Lisa Colosi-Peterson and Robert Davis are seeking to advance the efficiency, costs and carbon management of renewable natural gas (RNG) through their project, “Low Temperature CO2 Methanation for Biogas-to-Renewable Natural Gas Conversion via Advanced Ni-Based Catalysts.” Other major participants in the study include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the South Platte Renew and the City of Longmont, Colorado.
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Professor Zhang leads the UVA Zhang Lab which focuses on the development of functional materials for clean energy and environmental sustainability applications.
The research team aims to develop a low-temperature thermocatalytic carbon dioxide (CO2) methanation process to directly convert CO2 in biogas to methane (CH4), producing pipeline quality RNG. They plan to create a highly active, durable and selective nickel Ni-based CO2 methanation catalyst that allows the reaction unit to operate at low temperature. Success of this innovation will advance the state of the art in catalyst materials for biogas-to-RNG conversion processes with improved energy efficiency, operational cost and carbon management.
Their strategy to advance the performance of catalytic CO2 methanation involves the development of Ni-based bimetallic nanoparticles with controlled sizes, compositions and nanoparticle-support interactions. This includes:
1) enhancing the activity through control over the size of Ni nanoparticles and the nanoparticle-support interactions,
2) improving the stability and sulfur resistance through the modulation of Ni bimetallic nanoparticles,
3) optimizing the process operation conditions (pressure, temperature and regeneration) through scale-up studies and industrial reactor tests, and
4) guiding technical advancements towards effective cost targets and environmental benefits by an integrated techno-economic (TEA) and life cycle (LCA) analysis.
Their work will improve biogas-to-RNG technology by increasing RNG yields to utilize >95 percent of biogas carbon and eliminating the need for CO2 separation. It will also provide a biogas industry-oriented guidance involving catalyst performance evaluation, reactor and process modeling, and TEA/LCA. Moreover, it will lead to improvements in the productivity and stability of CO2 methanation catalysts by increasing our understanding of the fundamental science and the applied engineering involved.