Professor Anastassia Alexandrova is co-PI of team to receive $1.5M Sloan Foundation grant for research on electrochemical CO2 removal from air.
The interdisciplinary research team includes Professor Jenny Yang at the University of California, Irvine, and Professor Fik Brushett at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The three principal investigators (PIs) will contribute with theoretical modeling and design of electrochemical capture agents on the basis of the electronic structure calculations (Alexandrova), synthesis and electrochemical experiments (Yang), and reactor design (Brushett).
The award will support the team’s efforts to create new molecular compounds for electrochemical CO2 capture and concentration. According to Yang, this could help fossil fuel industries achieve net-zero carbon emissions. The researchers will also target direct air capture of carbon dioxide, devising negative-carbon technology to reduce atmospheric CO2. The concentrated carbon dioxide could be sequestered or recycled, ultimately mitigating the effects of climate change. The team is on a mission to find molecular design opportunities toward easy capture and easy release of CO2 in different oxidation states of the capture agent.
To learn more about Alexandrova’s research, visit her group’s website.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
