R. Gary Grim

For much of the past century, carbon dioxide (CO₂) has received little attention scientifically outside of its role as a byproduct in the industrialization of the global economy. This trend has recently been upended where, due to mounting environmental concerns, CO₂ has been brought squarely into the public consciousness. This surge in activity has contributed to a once unimaginable idea now pervading the scientific community: could CO₂, a highly stable byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion, be recycled and converted back into useful chemicals and fuels? Owing to its ubiquitous nature and availability at truly massive quantities, it is thought that CO₂-based products could offer a meaningful pathway toward lowering the environmental impact of many of the top industrial products while also enhancing supply chain diversification and resilience. In this manuscript we provide a holistic review of the pathways for CO₂ conversion, the underlying chemistry and challenges involved in the transformation to products, and considerations for commercialization.

Lithium has been deemed a critical mineral of national importance that finds uses in a wide range of applications, and its demand has been rising significantly in recent years. The urgency of meeting this demand requires lithium extraction from various aqueous sources such as continental brines, geothermal brines, seawater, produced water, and battery waste. While direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies such as adsorption, ion exchange, and solvent extraction have emerged as possible solutions, membrane technologies are also being investigated for various sources and at different stages of the recovery process. Here, we analyze the application of membranes for pretreatment of lithium source waters, bring management, lithium/magnesium separation, lithium/sodium separation, and lithium hydroxide conversion, and evaluate performance metrics for critical lithium separations from the literature. We explore the potential of membranes at every stage of the recovery process and describe their current status and future prospects. We describe hypothetical process trains with integrated membrane technologies for each source type and address their feasibility and challenges. The potential energy and water impacts of membrane-integrated and conventional DLE processes are also critically considered alongside performance and selectivity metrics, and this is illustrated using examples and calculated from published technical reports. This paper thus provides a comprehensive overview of the application of membranes along every stage of the lithium recovery process, emphasizing the versatility and potential of membrane technologies for critical mineral recovery.

West Biofuels - in collaboration with the University of California San Diego, the University of California Davis, the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), the Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Hydrate Research, Placer County Air Pollution Control District, the Sierra Business Council, and the Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas)-will demonstrate an innovative pathway to convert forest biomass to renewable gas (RG). The project, Production of Pipeline Grade Renewable Natural Gas and Value-Added Chemicals from Forest Biomass Residues, will utilize an existing pilot-scale gasification system and data and lessons learned from a lab-scale catalytic reactor design, develop, and demonstrate an integrated pilot-scale RG process with a scaled-up catalytic reactor and hydrate-based gas separation process. This robust and simple process uses a commercial proven gasifier, a commercially available catalyst that can tolerate gas contaminants, and a gas separation process that simplifies the downstream processing. Current testing has shown that the process can yield a large amount of methane rich renewable gas in addition to a mixture of propanol, ethanol and other higher alcohols and the relative amounts can be controlled by shifting the process conditions. This process is novel and groundbreaking because the product mixture of RG and valuable alcohols byproducts makes RG production economically feasible at $12 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) or less using forest biomass from high hazard zones.

Emerging CO ₂ to SAF pathways facilitates diversification of fuel production with the potential for a near carbon neutral footprint.

This article in MRS Bulletin and the framework set out in the introductory article articulate a scenario of renewable electrons and electrification of end

Comprehensive techno-economic analysis across a wide set of technologies and products provides insight into the economic feasibility of electron-mediated CO₂ reduction.