Abstract
Avoiding the most severe consequences of climate change requires gigaton-scale reductions in net anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the coming decade. These reductions can be achieved by accelerating the adoption of carbon-free or renewable power in place of fossil fuels, enacting large-scale capture and sequestration of atmospheric CO2, or both. Because most forms of renewable (e.g., solar and wind) power are intermittently available, inexpensive and energy efficient means of electricity storage are critically needed to enhance their adoption, especially on the grid. CO2 capture technology must likewise be energy efficient and utilize inexpensive materials. Electrochemical devices are promising candidates for both tasks, as they can efficiently store electrical energy and enable selective separations – in the latter case, without the Carnot efficiency penalty that conventional thermal separation methods face. In this talk, I will highlight some our group’s progress in using modeling and electroanalytical techniques to understand and improve the performance of organic redox-flow batteries for grid-scale energy storage. I will also discuss how these techniques can be extended to articulating the fundamental and practical performance limits of CO2 capture schemes driven by reversible pH swings generated by proton-coupled electron transfer.
About the Speaker
David Kwabi is an Associate Professor in the Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department at Yale University. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. His research focuses on developing energy- and resource-efficient electrochemical systems to address decarbonization and climate change mitigation.
Host: Professor Kyle Smith