Summary
T. Alan Hatton is the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, where he is also Director of the School of Chemical Engineering Practice. He is a graduate of the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa (B.S. in Engineering (Honors), M.S. in Engineering) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (Ph.D.). His current research interests encompass exploiting electro- and photochemical methods for environmental separations, with a strong focus on carbon dioxide removal from various sources.
Energy Solutions Forum Talk | Electrochemically Mediated Carbon Dioxide Removal for Climate Change Mitigation
The rapid rise in environmental anthropogenic carbon dioxide levels over the past five decades has contributed to global warming and ocean acidification, with adverse effects on worldwide climate patterns. Carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) is a crucial mitigation strategy to limit temperature rise by the turn of the century to less than, say, 2°C, but current approaches are energy intensive and most require significant swings in temperatures. Electrochemical methods offer benign, isothermal operation under ambient conditions, and can rely only on non-carbon electrical energy sources. We will discuss the general concepts underlying these methods, and their potential for carbon dioxide removal from point source emissions, the ambient environment, and ocean waters.