RCGI’s Greenhouse Gas program includes projects that range from processing data on greenhouse gas emissions to developing innovative technologies to control them
What is the actual amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted by Brazil? And how much of those gases are captured? These are the questions the Greenhouse Gases research program intends to answer. The GHG is one of the five programs of the Research Center for Greenhouse Gas Innovation (RCGI), whose research should help Brazil to resume its commitments made in the Paris Agreement to control global temperature increases. The Centre is located on the Campus of the University of São Paulo (USP) and funded by Shell and the Research Foundation of the State of São Paulo (FAPESP).
Coordinated by Emílio Carlos Nelli Silva, Professor at USP’s Polytechnic School, the GHG Program is divided into three subprograms: Process control, monitoring, and data integration; Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions; and CO2 capture processes. Each subprogram will have two or three projects, with about fifteen researchers per project.
In the first subprogram, one of the main projects focuses on measuring the CO2 emissions of the Amazon Forest by using sensors and processing the data. “To be able to control the emissions, we first need to quantify them and know where they are located. The project will also be important for verifying whether the mitigation techniques currently in use are actually working,” says Silva.
Carbon credits – Researcher Emílio Silva says that one of the advantages of exactly quantifying the reduction in CO2 emissions in certain processes is that this obtains more accurate and reliable carbon credit counts. A carbon credit represents one ton of carbon no longer being emitted into the atmosphere. “When a company demonstrates how much it is reducing emissions, this is priced and converted into carbon credits, which can be traded on the international market,” he explains.
The second group will focus on the development of innovative technologies to reduce GHG emissions in certain processes. One of the projects seeks to create smart labyrinth gaskets to control gas leaks in pneumatic machines. These machines use compressed air for energy and CO2 and methane leakage could occur. “The gaskets currently available are not capable of fully controlling the gas. This leakage is considered to be small, but if we have thousands of these machines throughout the world, we have a considerable level of greenhouse gas being leaked.”
In another project, the researchers’ objective will be to increase the efficiency of methane combustion in engines, thus avoiding its emission into the atmosphere. One of the strategies, according to Silva, is to use metal particles to conduct oxygen into the engine’s combustion chamber.
The third CO2 capture subprogram involves processes to separate CO2 from gas mixtures. One of the projects is working to optimize an adsorption-based system for large-scale CO2 capture resulting from burning biomass. In another project, CO2 capture is studied via so-called “Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES)” and membranes based on nanostructured materials.