Shedding Light on the Stakeholders' Perspectives for Carbon Capture

Reducing CO2 emissions requires urgently deploying large-scale carbon capture technologies, amongst other strategies. The quest for optimum technologies is a multi-objective problem involving various stakeholders. Today's research of these technologies follows a sequential approach, with chemists focusing first on material design and engineers subsequently seeking the optimal process. Eventually, this combination of materials and processes operates at a scale that significantly impacts the economy and the environment. Understanding these impacts requires analyzing factors such as greenhouse gas emissions over the lifetime of the capture plant, which now constitutes one of the final steps. In this work, we present the PrISMa (Process-Informed design of tailor-made Sorbent Materials) platform, which seamlessly connects materials, process design, techno-economics, and life-cycle assessment. We compare over sixty case studies in which CO2 is captured from different sources in five world regions with different technologies. These studies illustrate how the platform simultaneously informs all stakeholders: identifying the cheapest technology and optimal process configuration, revealing the molecular characteristics of top-performing materials, determining the best locations, and informing on environmental impacts, co-benefits, and trade-offs. Our platform brings together all stakeholders at an early stage of research, which is essential to accelerate innovations at a time this is most needed.