NSF Award
2330509
This Global Centers Track 2 Design award advances multidisciplinary, use-inspired approaches to tackle climate change by advancing the science of decarbonization of our energy streams. The world energy demand continues to increase due to an expanding human population and a concomitant rise in our standards of living. The energy-intensive needs of housing, transportation, industry, and agriculture all rely today on a mixture of energy sources. The continued dominance of fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, and petroleum in our energy stream calls for urgent transition toward decarbonization to avoid extreme climate change. An international team from the U.S., Japan, Israel, and Ghana brings together their expertise to identify and begin to address the key scientific and engineering challenges to successfully implementing decarbonization. Together with stakeholders from academic, industry, research and policy-making in four countries, the multidisciplinary Global Center design team explores several pathways, from direct carbon capture from the atmosphere to the carbon-frese production of so-called "green" hydrogen to identify the best science, policy, and engineering solutions for decarbonization. The design team will conduct a series of workshops, develop a course on energy and sustainability for students and early career researchers, and promote student professional development through international study opportunities. <br/> <br/>This design award is focused on three major thrusts. The first thrust is carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration. Researchers explore the use of nanoporous materials, mesoporous materials, and other porous media as optimal pathways for the absorption of CO2 gas. These materials should be cost-effective, scalable, and have the capability to either convert CO2 to a useful product or one easily sequestered. The second thrust is in the production of blue hydrogen—which is defined as hydrogen fuel formed by steam reforming of methane while capturing the CO2 byproduct. International experts in chemical looping methods and oxygen-carrying materials will strategize how to utilize these approaches to produce blue hydrogen efficiently and cost-effectively. The third and final thrust is in the production of green hydrogen through the thermochemical or photochemical splitting of water, an emerging technology. The global partners will use solar thermochemical splitting of water as a novel way to achieve green hydrogen. A cross-cutting aspect of award activities is the employment of machine learning to tackle materials discovery. Through all three major thrusts, the Global Centers design team will enhance our knowledge on global solutions for decarbonizing our energy streams. <br/>This award is funded by the Global Centers program, an innovative program that supports use-inspired research addressing global challenges related to climate change and/or clean energy. Track 2 design awards support U.S.-based researchers to bring together international teams to develop research questions and partnerships, conduct landscape analyses, synthesize data, and/or build multi-stakeholder networks to advance their use-inspired research at larger scale in the future.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
