Faculty Projects - University of Houston
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CENTER FOR CARBON MANAGEMENT IN ENERGY
Image of Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos and two student researchers in the lab

CCME Faculty Projects

Our faculty will have world class capabilities in their SME areas for transformative research that will contribute to necessary solutions. Only by organizing and catalyzing the cross-disciplinary collaborations will the result be greater than the sum of the individuals. The project teams will organize around marketplace challenges and will be driven by a seed grant process that not only encourages multi-purposed teams and projects, but in fact requires it to be so. Our CCME will be aligned in teams for outcomes and not in functional research areas providing a unique and most effective approach to results.

Recently Released CCME Grants

In 2020 our call for proposals generated 19 responses in many different areas of the carbon management field and they were all universally worthy of support and funding. Through the guidance of our industry advisory board we selected the 7 listed below in unique areas of impact. These proposal concepts will receive industry progress reviews every 6 months until conclusion in 2021 and we will drive for scale up and expansion of the research through industry support, external funding calls, and collaborations. We will post the progress and discoveries here in the Funded Grants section of our CCME website as each unique grant concept is advanced.

Principal Investigators: Dr. Dimitrios G. Hatzignatiou | Dr. Christine Ehlig-Economides

Overview:

Impact is the expansion and knowledge of sub-surface geologic capacity and potential access for CO 2 storage in the US Gulf Coast. Determining the capacity of storage and the critical locations for access can enable a long term storage repository and enable a CCUS roadmap to marry all sources and sinks in the region.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Praveen Bollini

Overview:

This technology can enable the direct capture of carbon emissions at the site of the emissions and provide a utilization conversion technology that can address fugitive emission in a distributed manner. This will enable direct air capture in a much more concentrated stream and achieve a more cost effective DAC process.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Francisco Robles Hernandez

Overview:

Petroleum coke is a carbon waste that if upgraded and converted to higher value products such as graphite, graphene and morphed graphene can enable cost effective upgrade and utilizaiton of carbon.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Patrick Cirino

Overview:

The technology will utilize bio-pharma non-traditional technology for commodity chemicals and the process aim to impact conversion costs but also greatly lower the carbon footprint of traditonal hydrocarbon processes and the elimination of the classic CH 4 based reforming process that is so carbon intensive. Transitioning to this technology will be a trasnformative step in the petrochemical industry for large scale chemical production.

Principal Investigators: Dr. Hadi Ghasemi | Dr. T. Randall Lee

Overview:

A business case will be developed to further demonstrate the ability to capture and sequester CO 2 using renewable energy and a more spot effective manner in the carbon capture processing.

Principal Investigators: Dr. Jiefu Chen | Dr. Xiaonan Shan

Overview:

A transformative sensing technology that will enable a far more expansive and robust sensing process for down-hole assurance of permanent and safe CO 2 storage and to provide a demonstrated and reliable measuring, monitoring and verification of the CO 2 storage.

Principal Investigator: Dr. Venkatesh Balan

Overview:

Biodiesel conversion from algae through a transformative catalytic conversion. A business case around the end product market will validate the market opportunity to match the immense possiblities of this technology.