GHG-R Flagship Destination

Supercharging Separations
Reactive capture and conversion of nitrous oxide emissions

Team: William Tarpeh, Thomas Jaramillo

Scoping Reactive Capture and Conversion of Nitrous Oxide Emissions - The goal of this project is to design novel and scalable electrochemical devices that capture and convert dilute, impure, and dynamic nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions from the environment. N₂O is a major greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 273 times that of CO₂ for a 100-year timescale. Since N₂O is only one of several reactive nitrogen species in the environment (e.g., N₂O in the atmosphere, NO₃- in water, NH3 in soil), efforts to mitigate N₂O must consider a complex network of chemical reactions. Environmental N₂O is dilute (331 ppb), impure, and dynamic. 

To capture N₂O in the environment, we need an advanced understanding of both purification (chemical separations) and transformation (chemical catalysis). Separating N₂O from water streams is a chemically distinct challenge from separating N₂O from air. We plan to engineer electrically driven processes that will separate N₂O from its natural environment and convert it into benign and even value-added products such as N₂, NH₃, or NO₃-. We propose the first project to demonstrate direct air and direct aqueous N₂O capture. The potentially transformative project may directly influence the global nitrogen cycle, which humans have drastically altered by doubling flows of reactive nitrogen in the environment.