STRP

The technology in the proposed project aims to significantly reduce the cost of carbon resource recovery from the combustion of fossil resources and, eventually, the utilizations, e.g., enhanced oil recovery (EOR) of the recovered carbon resources. Wyoming is well known for its rich hydrocarbon resources, including coal, natural gas, and oil. Especially for coal, Wyoming is the No. 1 state from a tonnage perspective, the No. 1 state from the standing point of the quality of coal as an energy resource due to its low sulfur, mercury, and ash contents, and the No. 1 state from its potential as a rare earth elements (REEs) resource in the U.S. The high cost of recovering CO2 via chemisorption-based separation, the primary separation method, lies in its low sorption and desorption rate during its separation. The UW team has developed a proprietary catalyst (U.S. Patent 9579602) to overcome the challenges of accelerating CO2 sorption and desorption rates. The innovation results have been published in Nature Communications and cited by Nature Catalysis. As UW TTO teams know, multiple domestic and international companies are interested in technology and are talking with the TTO team about the possibilities of licensing the technology. The progress to be made with the support of Wyoming ART Seed Translational Research Project Grants (W ART STRPGs) will be beneficial to 1) reducing the cost of recovering the carbon resource for its subsequent applications, 2. accelerating the transfer of the technology to industries, and 3) Wyoming and national economies.