Carbon Dioxide Capture: Processes, Technology & Environmental Implications (Environmental Science, Engineering and Technology)

The large scale consumption of fossil fuels for the production of energy has raised CO2 levels up to 400 ppm over the last decades. These high atmospheric CO2 concentrations are linked to severe environmental problems such as the undesirable effects of global warming. In the 21st century, the world will be still searching for strategies to re-balance the natural carbon cycle and decoupling the economic growth from CO2 emissions. The transition to a low-carbon economy emerges as a priority to sustain socio-economic progress in a world of finite resources. In this sense, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) are different approaches aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas impacts from fossil fuels combustion in industrial and energy-related processes. With the rapidly growing energy demand as countries develop, the CCS and CCU may be considered as an interesting mid-term solution to mitigate environmental impacts and allow humans to continue using fossil energy until renewable energy technologies have matured. In both processes, the CO2 capture seems to be one of the main bottleneck steps where the efforts have to be applied. Thus, the development of new processes and technologies for CO2 capture in energy production is under research in order to maximise their cost-efficiency in this CO2-emission constrained framework. The book Carbon Dioxide Capture: Processes, Technology and Environmental Implications aims at presenting the recent developments for CO2 capture processes in fossil fuel power plants (i.e. pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxy-combustion). Besides, new and prospective breakthrough technologies for CO2 capture for CCS and CCU approaches are examined. About the Author Dr Albo completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cantabria (Spain), focused on the development of innovative membrane based processes for CO2 separation. During his PhD, he was guest researcher at the prestigious Laboratory of Membrane Processes of the New University of Lisbon (Portugal). He next held a JSPS postdoctoral fellowship at Hiroshima University (Japan) to explore new membrane materials for gas separations. From January 2014, he joined the University of the Basque Country (Spain) thanks to Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral programme, to develop cost-effective processes for the chemical conversion of CO2. He recently completed a research stay at the Institute of Electrochemistry (Spain). As a result of his intense scientific activity, Dr. Albo has reported a total of 54 publications, including 25 scientific articles in SCI peer-reviewed high impact journals, 5 articles in journals with ISSN, 3 book chapters and 21 contributions to conference proceedings with ISBN. Besides, due to the quality and applicability of the work developed, he has received the Solvay Award for Best MSc thesis, SENER Award for Best PhD thesis, Extraordinary Doctorate Award from University of Cantabria and Juan María Parés research award.