17 Mar 2025
New study explores advances in calcium looping technology for carbon capture
Researchers reviewed a decade of progress in improving carbon dioxide capture materials and highlighted the potential of AI in material design
As global warming accelerates and energy resources dwindle, carbon capture and sustainable energy technologies are becoming increasingly vital. Among these, calcium looping technology stands out for its cost-effectiveness and ability to integrate with other systems.
In a new study, a team of researchers facilitated calcium looping technology for both high temperature Carbon dioxide (CO2) recovery and waste heat recovery at up to 900°C. Built on high temperature thermal batteries developed by the Energy Storage and Energy Carriers Group (ESEC), the team collaborated with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, the Energy Process Engineering and Conversion Technologies for Renewable Energies, Berlin, and School of Energy and Power Engineering at the Northeast Electric Power University, China, to develop a machine learning approach that can predict the synergistic performance of CO2 capture and waste heat recovery using the composite calcium looping materials under different conditions.
A key advantage of this method is its ability to predict material properties without requiring a deep understanding of the underlying chemistry or physics. This can significantly accelerate material screening, design, and development, which can be broadly applied to various material innovations, including catalysts, adsorbents, batteries, and fuels. The study also provides a comprehensive guide for developing more effective sorbents and highlights the importance of tailoring synthesis methods to achieve better results.
This study published in Wiley Small reviewed the past 10 years of progress in overcoming these challenges, offering insights into the design and performance of improved synthetic Calcium oxide (CaO) -based materials.
Zirui Wang, lead author and 2nd Year DPhil student in the ESEC group (led by Dr Binjian Nie), says: “This work advances explorations in carbon capture and waste heat recovery materials. I sincerely appreciate the support from the department and all co-authors.”
Alexander Harrison, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department and a co-author of the paper adds, “Calcium looping technologies form a key part of ‘next generation’ approaches to carbon capture, and strategies for decarbonising hard-to-abate sections of industry. With this work, we have compiled a dataset of approaches for synthesising calcium-based (CO2) sorbents which we hope will be useful to the broad chemical engineering community and identified machine learning approaches by which the tedious work of testing new material formulations could be considerably accelerated in future.”
The work has been funded by UKRI (IDRIC) Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre programme. IDRIC is backed by over £20m funding and is part of the £210m Industrial Decarbonisation challenge.
