Rasmus Fehrmann

Abstract:

The world is facing increasing needs of technologies for removal of pollutants in industrial flue gases emitted to the atmosphere in order to avoid environmental hazards as acid rain and smog with severe consequences for the nature, human health and man-made constructions. In addition, the issue of climate changes due to the large amount of carbon dioxide also emitted industrially to and accumulated in the atmosphere is now more than ever recognized as a global concern which needs a global solution. The large industries -with a need for pollution control- that will be addressed in this presentation, include power, cement, glass manufacture and waste incineration plants as well as sea transport units. We are carrying out research dedicated to solve these problems not only by traditional catalytic routes where we, from a molecular understanding of the catalyst performance, try to improve the composition and catalyst life-time. But the problems may also be attacked by new materials, like supported ionic liquid phase (SILP) gas absorbers, where the pollutants may be selectively absorbed, desorbed and finally converted to useful mineral acids of commercial grade, really a green waste-to-value approach that we pursue instead of the traditional cleaning processes that use chemicals to form new waste. Our recent results for selective reversible absorption of SO2, NO and CO2 by SILP materials will be highlighted.