$30 million from DOE for carbon capture, sequestration

BERKELEY — Two University of California, Berkeley, faculty members will receive $30 million over the next five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to find better ways to separate carbon dioxide from power plant and natural gas well emissions and stick it permanently underground, according to an announcement yesterday (Monday, April 27) from the White House. Berend Smit, a professor of chemical engineering and of chemistry, and Donald DePaolo, a professor of earth and planetary science and head of the Earth Sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will receive $2 million and $4 million, respectively, per year for the next five years. The funding will be used to set up two Energy Frontiers Research Centers (EFRC), which will be focused on carbon capture and sequestration. The key to separating CO2 from power plant flue gases is to create a porous material that selectively captures CO2 molecules (red-grey-red rods representing O=C=O) and not nitrogen and water molecules. Here, the porous material is a metal-organic framework consisting of cobalt atoms (purple) linked by an organic bridging ligand (1,4-benzenedipyrazolate, with nitrogen and carbon atoms shown in blue and grey, respectively). (Deanna M. D'Alessandro/UC Berkeley) The announcement was made by the White House in conjunction with an address by President Obama to the National Academy of Sciences at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., at which he pledged big increases in funding for scientific research.