SEMPLASTICS EHC LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: C56-25c

Description

Cost-effective, scalable technologies that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere – as well as capture carbon dioxide from stationary emitters such as fossil-fueled power plants – are an urgent need in the face of climate change. Capturing carbon dioxide is just part of the challenge; finding a cost-effective way to prevent the captured CO2 from escaping back into the atmosphere is critical to limiting the effect of this gas on the global environment and economy. The produced water from oil and gas extraction typically contains large amounts of metals. Carbon dioxide can be reacted with this produced water to create a wide variety of metal carbonates, effectively sequestering the CO2. This work proposes to leverage previous research in CO2 reaction with produced water, along with prior work combining waste products with proprietary resins to produce useful materials such as building components, to arrive at a cost-effective means to address this global problem. The proposed effort is based on previous success developing a process to use metal carbonates from CO2 mineralized with produced water to make high-performance building materials and low-cost, property enhancing fillers for commercial plastics. Initial work has shown that parts made from these mixed carbonates have mechanical and physical properties comparable to existing building materials. Depending on the source, a mixed carbonate panel can contain as much as 30% by mass of captured CO2. The value of selected commercial building products is high enough to offset the costs of CO2 mineralization and processing of the carbonates, leading to a commercially viable process for sequestering carbon dioxide. In Phase I, previously obtained results will be used as a foundation to develop and construct a laboratory-scale mineralization system to demonstrate produced water processing. Sample building components and plastic fillers will be manufactured from the mineralization products to show the utility of the end-to-end process. Phase II would build upon this work through further optimization and scale-up of the process and development of a realistic commercialization strategy. This technology benefits the public in that it would provide a cost-effective means to permanently remove carbon dioxide from both point sources and direct air capture while producing useful products. Further, produced water streams would be made much more readily purifiable through this process, reducing the cost of reusing this water for public purposes.