RES/CHON research areas. Some thoughts

Ian Page - 2021.05.18

The general opinion of the major areas for research over the next decade is often AI/Robots/Computing/Nanotechnology.

However, if you look into the huge e-transition coming, and largely this decade, this generates a long list with, electrolysis for hydrogen production, ammonia production, steel and aluminum production, batteries, fuel cells, pushing solar to 40%, and CO2RR/DAC for chemical industry. There is also a huge minerals issue of converting mines that are exhausting their ore quality and merging the mining and recycling industries into something more appropriate to future needs.

If you add the very significant problem of refrigeration and space heating these seem to be the main areas.

While the general list of foundational technologies first mentioned are contributors, my second list is quite a long way from being directly driven by them.

However, there are some distinctive foundational technology areas that are directly relevant and also relevant to most of the areas.

These are membranes, electrolytes, and catalysts.

Batteries, electrolysers and fuel cells have many similarities in that they all involve electricity, electrodes, and membranes/electrolytes that are highly selective to keeping some things apart while letting others through. Catalysts are often imprinted onto the membranes or the electrodes They also involve atomic level and real time atomic level studies of how individual ions solvate, move, and transition through pores or delve deep into electrodes to find spaces to reside, and atomic level understanding of how reactants affect and are affected by the catalyst. Increasingly the shape of the surface of a catalyst or an electrode matter, which is reminiscent of nature's enzymes. Some of the diagrams are now looking more like biological diagrams.

While computing and AI do help with modelling, the real problem in this field is getting fundamental real time data without which models are not much use. AI is helping with the Edison style search of huge configuration spaces of catalysts, electrolytes and materials. There has been some success in reducing wasted time in formulations but what is most needed is a fundamental understanding of what on earth is going on!

There are many papers on aspects of this which mainly reveal to me how much isn't known about these 100-year-old technologies and how hard it is to know more!

It is worth noting that there is a big overlap with the problems of the chemical industry. Much energy is wasted in persuading chemicals to react. Then much more in sorting out and separating the results of those reactions. Better catalysts result in less energy, more selectivity and yield of the reactions. Better membranes and electro membranes can achieve separations at room temperature- in one paper there was an amazing separation of sodium and potassium ions in water, and another separating lithium and sodium ions in water from an initial concentration of many orders of magnitude different. The latter being very useful. Although industry has honed its catalysts over decades, when electrification comes it will often not be a simple replacement of gas with electricity- variable energy flows and lower temperature approaches will often be the most cost competitive way forward, as well as modular and distributed reactors.

Membranes can also be sticky in a flow of liquid and preferentially pull out tiny proportions of an element from a soup of others, then with a clean flow and a change in acidity or electric potential release a concentrated stream of pure material. This has been used for DAC.

Mining is increasingly a matter of chasing very low-quality ores (0.5% say for copper), moving huge quantities of unwanted material, extracting what's wanted from it through multiple stages often involving a train and boat journey, and then discarding most of what's transported as it isn't the material wanted. (In the case of lithium/spodumene 93% of what is transported internationally is waste). We see the increasing cost of this as triggering the element cascade where one element is substituted by another in a difficult to predict chain. However, it also suggests that there may be massive gains in production costs if apparently unnecessary stages are removed by rethinking the system holistically (Tesla). This may involve membranes to extract and purify tiny quantities near the source mine without massive costs (e.g., lithium from deep brine). 

Recycling has some similarities to modern mining in that many of the materials are in tiny percentages mixed up with lots of other stuff and normal approaches tend to be rather crude and energy intensive.  In a world of zero waste, and cyclic manufacturing, the demand for new mined material is going to be reduced from satisfying a flow demand to satisfying a stock increase demand. With much lower quantities required from mines, it will be hard to maintain the current economies of scale so new thinking will be required which will involve both disruption to industry component segments, and demand for new or different technologies. 

CHON says that material substitution ends up with just CHON (and aluminum), so longer-term research is needed to create new horizon 3 end products that don’t need most of the materials mined today. This is not entirely a pipe dream. Plastics/polymers have already replaced many materials beneficially and although they have their own problems, new technology research is delivering polymers and oils that don’t have these issues.

In a CHON world, membranes and perhaps also bio inspired active membranes where often the "catalyst" and sometimes the processing reaction are embedded in the membrane or isolated by it, will be critical both in reducing energy consumption, and in minimizing the need to separate things out until the final stage.