Change in the air

By Eric Gallippo | Photos by Marc-Grégor Campredon

Most scientists agree: To solve the current climate crisis and ensure clean air to breathe, we have to stop burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But what about the CO2 that’s already there? And what about all the stuff we use daily that gets made from carbon materials—materials that will eventually run out if we keep using them?

That’s where the University of Michigan’s Global CO2 Initiative comes in. Housed within the College of Engineering, the initiative was established in 2018 with a gift of assets from San Francisco nonprofit organization CO2 Sciences and brings together experts working in engineering, sustainability, chemistry, entrepreneurship, public policy, business, and more to develop the worldwide implementation of carbon capture and utilization technologies.

“U‑M’s relationships with researchers, policymakers, and industry partners, paired with its world-class faculty and facilities, creates a well-positioned ecosystem to support the deployment of carbon management technologies with players from around the world,” said CO2 Sciences Founder and GCI Advisory Board Chair Bernard J. David when the gift was announced.

Thanks to ongoing donor support, U‑M and GCI have quickly become a world leader in laying the groundwork for widespread use of carbon capture technology, bringing carbon-reducing solutions to market, and inspiring the next generation of carbon capture researchers.

A pathway from waste to value

With carbon capture and utilization, CO2 is captured from industrial emissions or removed from the air or water, to be used as an ingredient instead of being stored underground as waste material. According to GCI Director Volker Sick, utilizing captured carbon presents a more cost-effective way to handle CO2, doing something useful with it, and reducing the CO2 burden in the environment.

“For sustainability, that’s a good thing to do,” Sick said. “And if we can make everyday products, such as concrete or aggregates used in construction, wonderful, right? Two birds with one stone.”

Those products also include fuels, chemicals, carbon fiber, polymer-based plastics, and agricultural products, representing an emerging trillion-dollar industry, all made with carbon from captured CO2.

“It’s such an opportunity, because if you include CO2 as an ingredient, especially in those construction materials, then we don’t need to treat it as waste, where we just capture it and then pump it underground,” said Susan Fancy, GCI associate director. “It is a viable pathway. These products have economic value.”

From the ground up

With carbon capture still in the early stages, the GCI’s main work so far has been creating global guidelines for lifecycle assessments, market research for products, and support for early-stage companies, said Sick, who is also an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mechanical Engineering, DTE Energy Professor of Advanced Energy Research, and faculty director for the Center for Entrepreneurship. The idea is to help identify and support opportunities where carbon capture can make a real impact reducing emissions while also benefiting both private industry and consumers.  

“Philanthropic support has helped the initiative stay neutral when it comes to specific technologies and our assessment work and focus on higher level research,” Fancy said.

“It has allowed us to emerge as a global, very influential voice of reason on what makes sense for carbon conversion and utilization and what doesn’t,” Fancy said. “We have been able to think in a scientific way about what really does benefit the climate, what does benefit the economy, and what are the social benefits.”

For example, Sick and colleagues at GCI recently worked with fuel maker Saudi Aramco on a study about producing and deploying sustainable aviation fuel produced from CO2 in the United States.

“This is a huge market. This is a growing business,” Sick said. “If you look at the existing fuel industry, they know they have to change. We can help them with that. We can also help to preserve jobs, so that gets me very excited.”
 

Research in action

When it comes to lowering carbon emissions, time is also a factor. Sick said the typical 20 to 30 years it might take to move an invention from a university lab to commercial success just isn’t there. GCI has worked to help secure research funding for faculty projects in the School for Environment and Sustainability, Center for Sustainable Systems, and CoE, from efforts to produce low-carbon, bendable concrete to new methods of capturing CO2 to harvesting enhanced bamboo fibers to be used in place of plastic reinforcements.

“I think that’s one of the exciting elements of our work, that we work with all of these disciplines based on what expertise we need, what learning opportunities we provide,” Sick said.

In his teaching, Sick works with students from across the university who are passionate about curbing carbon emissions. In the Perot Jain TechLab Climate Change course, students work directly with startup companies reducing-carbon emissions. Backed by Perot Jain capital and offered through the CoE’s Center for Entrepreneurship, TechLab also offers courses ranging from vehicle electrification to health care technology.

“I have teams of students helping startup companies with exploratory work: Where should they set up shop? Where do they have the resources? Where is the workforce, et cetera,” Sick said. “So, in that sense, this is a lot of fun to be the interface of research and education and real world action.”

Join the club

Outside of class, students from across U‑M have learned about the GCI’s work and asked to get involved. Today, there are about 50 students representing CoE, LSA, SEAS, Ross School of Business, and more engaged with GCI either as interns or in the Michigan Carbon Capture student organization.

“Students are really uncomfortable about their futures with regards to climate, and they want to do something about it,” Fancy said. “They like their chosen field, but they want to apply it to something that will make their futures and the future of the planet more promising.”

In 2022, a group of GCI interns from chemical engineering, molecular biology, marketing, and public policy worked on a project funded by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers organization to research carbon offsets and removal opportunities in the Midwest and two Canadian provinces.

At Michigan Carbon Capture, teams of students have been designing and building their own devices for capturing CO2 directly from the air for a few years now. One newer effort that was launched with the help of donor funding aims to capture CO2 from wastewater electrolysis while also producing hydrogen for separate use. “Project Sapphire” offers a novel approach that Fancy said puts the students’ work at the forefront of science.

“The students are getting really valuable experience in these hands-on projects that if we hadn’t had that support, this wouldn’t have gotten off the ground,” she said.

For team co-leader and engineering graduate student Michael Ettlinger, working with GCI has been a “dream come true.”

“It has allowed me to hone my expertise in this niche emerging field in ways that I do not believe would be possible at any other university,” he said.