Event Details

Prof Professor Mohamed Kheireddine Aroua from Sunway University and Department of Engineering, Lancaster University will be giving a talk on green solvents for CO2 capture

Abstract: Carbon dioxide capture is currently a research area of tremendous importance due to environmental concerns about global warming and natural gas and biogas quality concerns. Many efficient technologies are commercially available for this purpose, but most of them use chemical absorbents that pose environmental problems such as air and water pollution. As such there is a need to develop environment friendly solvents for the CO2 capture. The quest for green solvents as an alternative to the conventional well established alkanolamines is facing challenges and at the same time presents opportunities to researchers. Ionic liquids were recently proposed as potential green solvents for CO2 capture. This is mainly due to their extremely low vapor pressures compared to industrially used alkanolamines. Investigations by different groups have shown that CO2 is remarkably soluble in ILs. Based on absorption mechanisms, the ILs can be divided into two categories, conventional ILs and task-specific ILs. The conventional ILs absorbs less CO2 because of physical interactions between CO2 and ILs. The task-specific ILs with alkaline groups could sequester larger amounts of CO2 than that of conventional ILs because of the chemical interactions or reactivities between CO2 and alkaline groups of ILs. Despite the many advantages of ionic liquids there are many challenges facing their application on an industrial scale. These challenges will be discussed and recent research in developing alternative green solvents will be presented in this talk.

Biography: Holder of a Degree in Chemical Engineering from Tunisia and a Master in Material Sciences and Engineering from the University of Nancy I, France, Professor Mohamed Kheireddine obtained his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Nancy I. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Malaya in 1993 as a lecturer and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002, then to a Professor in 2007 and to a senior Professor in 2010. While in the University of Malaya, he held the posts of Deputy Dean of the Institute of Graduate Studies from 2009 to 2016, Head of the Chemical Engineering Department from 2016 to 2017, and Head of the Centre for Separation Science and Technology (CSST) from 2013-2017. Currently he is a Professor with Sunway University, Malaysia and Lancaster University in the UK. On 2nd January 2018, he was appointed as an Honorary Professor at the University of Malaya. Recently he has established the Centre for Carbon Dioxide Capture and Utilisation (CCDCU) at Sunway University and was appointed as the Head of the Centre on 1st January 2018. His research addresses fundamental and technical issues related to water, energy, and environment. He is interested in developing green solvents, sorbents and processes for CO2 capture and utilization; treatment of water and wastewater using novel adsorbents and advanced electrochemical processes; production of biodiesel and transformation of its by-products to value-added chemicals; and providing safe water to communities in remote areas through the application of membrane technology. He has supervised to completion 25 Ph.D. and 20 Master students. His research has generated more than 160 articles in ISI ranked journals and more than 6,000 citations.