Expires on: 05/01/2024
Applications are invited for a PhD fellowship/scholarship at Graduate School of Natural Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the Chemistry programme.
Climate changes are strongly related to CO2 emissions, and new approaches to capture or utilize CO2 is of utmost importance for developing a sustainable society. Nearly all major industries rely on heat or energy generation from combustion plants, releasing CO2 from localized point sources, which contribute with about one-third of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
This PhD project concerns capture of CO2 from point sources by carbonation of magnesium-silicate minerals, where CO2 under aqueous or humid conditions is transformed into carbonate ions. These ions will react with the minerals and form carbonate compounds, where CO2 is bound in a solid material on a geological time scale. This approach is suitable for removal of CO2 from exhaust gases from combustion plants, and it will not require an up-concentration of the CO2 level prior to carbonation. Magnesium-silicate minerals are widely available in the Earth’s crust all over the World and therefore, the mineral carbonation approach has a tremendous CO2 removal potential.
Qualifications
The PhD candidate must have a Master’s degree (3-year PhD programme) in chemistry, nanoscience, physics, or materials science. Knowledge about inorganic materials, minerals, microscale characterization tools, and solid-state NMR spectroscopy will be considered as a plus.