Energy Materials and Processes Laboratory

The Energy Materials and Processes Laboratory (EMPL), founded by Professor Ki Bong Lee in 2009, has worked on separation technologies such as adsorption, membrane separation, solvent extraction, etc. for the application to energy and environmental fields. Particularly, EMPL has interest in novel separation-enhanced reaction processes where separation and reaction can be carried out simultaneously in a single unit, resulting in overcoming of thermodynamic limitation and the development of compact and economical processes. EMPL has focused on three topics: hydrogen production, greenhouse gas mitigation, and heavy oil upgrading. In the hydrogen research, sorption-enhanced reaction processes, where hydrogen production reaction and by-product CO2 removal by sorption are performed simultaneously, have been developed. For greenhouse gas mitigation, high-temperature CO2 sorbents such as hydrotalcite, double salt, and sodium zirconate are newly developed. Also, new porous carbon materials are developed from various precursors for adsorption of CO2 and non-CO2 gases like CF4. Heavy oil upgrading studies are targeting efficient utilization of oil sand bitumen and vacuum residues. Among many upgrading processes, solvent deasphalting and fast pyrolysis processes are studied. Recently, studies on adsorption of NOx, sulfur compounds, and Cu ions have started.