Triggered by discussions at FOA-13, an IAS Working Group has been appointed to evaluate the carbon footprint caused by our conferences and to identify possibilities for its reduction. The aim is to rethink and reinvent FOA conferences by increasing the share of emissions reduction actions relative to compensation through carbon offsetting.

The working group’s first task was to estimate the CO₂ emissions of the next FOA conference (FOA-14, Denver) based on historical attendance data and propose an approach to compensate for them. This culminated in an optional $70 charge to the conference registration fee, which was included by default, to purchase CO₂ offsets.

The working group is also considering a number of other ideas, including those that would limit flying (e.g., satellite conferences in parallel to the main FOA meeting and use of online/visio-conferencing) or that would make the travelling more efficient (e.g., summer school and topical workshops right before/after the main FOA meeting). Also, our community can play a key role in tackling CO₂ emissions through the implementation of adsorption-based technologies to tackle a variety of industrial separations. With relevance to the energy sector, some examples include hydrogen purification, natural- or bio-gas upgrading, and CO₂ capture from flue gas or air.

Results from the working group will be communicated on this page, together with actions to be implemented in future FOA conferences.

Dr. Benoit Coasne obtained his PhD in Physics on capillary condensation in nanoporous materials (Paris, 2003). Then, he worked from 2003 to 2005 as a postdoc with Prof. Keith Gubbins on freezing of nanoconfined systems (Raleigh, NC, USA). He was then appointed CNRS researcher in Montpellier (2005) and promoted to CNRS Research Director (2015). From 2012 to 2015, he was leading fundamental research on multiscale modeling of adsorption and transport in the CNRS/MIT lab at MIT in Boston. He is currently affiliated CNRS Research Director in the Interdisciplinary Physics Lab in Grenoble, France. He is also currently appointed Attaché aux Sciences for Veolia Water Technologies. He was Cofounder and first President of the French Adsorption Society.

Dr. David Danaci is a research associate at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, where he investigates adsorption-based separations for CO₂ capture, and sorption-enhanced reactions. His research is a combination of experimental work (materials synthesis to pilot-scale), process modelling, and techno-economic analysis.

Professor Yoshiaki Kawajiri is a Professor at the Department of Materials Process Engineering, Nagoya University. His research interests are modeling, design, and optimization for adsorption processes. His work addresses development of CO₂ capture, reactive adsorption, and simulated moving bed chromatographic processes, utilizing numerical, statistical, and experimental techniques.

Professor Ziyi Li is a Professor at the School of Energy and Environmental Engineering of University of Science and Technology Beijing. He has long experience in academic study and industrial application of flue gas (CO₂, NO_x, VOCs, et al.) purification and recycling using adsorption technology. A major focus of his research is developing rotary adsorption sorbents, processes and devices for energy-efficient capture of CO₂ from various industrial sources. Over 10 of his patents have been commercialized by companies.

Dr. Philip Llewellyn is the CCUS R&D Program Manager at TotalEnergies. Philip’s scientific expertise lies in gas-solid interface thermodynamics and the use of nanoporous materials for separations and storage. His current focus is towards greenhouse mitigation across the board from capture, transport, permanent storage and CO₂ transformation into useful platform molecules. He is interested in all aspects of R&D at all TRL levels. His position still allows some time to delve into emerging problems. Philip represents TotalEnergies at the IEA Greenhouse Technologies Executive Committee. He is author of over 200 scientific publications, >50 invited/keynote lectures, >34 000 citations and current H-index is 80 (Google).

May-Yin (Ashlyn) Low is a final year PhD student in the Chemical Engineering Department at Imperial College London. She is supervised by Professor Camille Petit and her research focuses on the investigation of CO2 adsorbents for direct air capture. In particular, she aims to help bridge the gap between adsorbent and process development for DAC by experimentally measuring the material, equilibrium sorption, and kinetic sorption properties needed for process modelling for various promising adsorbents. Before joining Imperial, Ashlyn completed her BASc degree in Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Professor Marco Mazzotti has been professor of process engineering at ETH Zurich since May 1997 (associate until March 2001 and Full Professor thereafter). He holds a Laurea (MSc, 1984) and a Ph.D. (1993), both in Chemical Engineering and from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Before joining ETH Zurich, he had worked five years in industry (1985-1990), and had been Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano (1994–1997).

He was coordinating lead author of the IPCC Special Report on CCS (2002-2005), President of the International Adsorption Society (2010–2013), chairman of the Board of the Energy Science Center of the ETH Zurich (2011-2017), and chairman of the Working Party on Crystallization of the EFCE (2014-2021). He was a contributor to the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany (2014). He has been awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant towards „Studying secondary nucleation for the intensification of continuous crystallization“ (2018-2024). He was the recipient of the SINTEF and NTNU CCS Award 2021. He is member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and the coordinator of the project DemoUpCARMA (Demonstration and Upscaling of Carbon Dioxide Management Solutions for a Net-Zero Switzerland). He was the chair of the 9th International Conference on Fundamentals of Adsorption FOA9 (Taormina, I, May 20–25, 2007), of the 18th International Symposium on Industrial Crystallization (Zurich, CH, September 15–16, 2011), and of the 2019 Gordon Research Conference on Carbon, Capture, Utilization and Storage (Les Diablerets, CH, May 5-10, 2019).

As of October 2023, he has published about 450 papers that have been cited more than 25,000 times, resulting in an H-index of 85 (Google Scholar). Sixty-one doctoral students have graduated with him, and fourteen doctoral students are currently advised by him.

Dr. Ronny Pini is a Reader in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. He has 15+ years of experience in the study of adsorption fundamentals and adsorption processes. A major focus of his research is reducing CO₂ emissions from industrial processes, including natural gas recovery processes with CO₂ storage and separation processes for CO₂ capture. His expertise lies in the characterisation of adsorption and transport processes in porous media, extending across synthetic adsorbents, polymers and natural geo-sorbents, by producing experimental data for the fundamental properties of interest and by combining them with mathematical analysis and process modelling.

Manila Madhuri Reddy recently submitted her Ph.D. dissertation to the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. She is supervised by Professor Pradip Dutta in the Heat Transfer laboratory. Her research focused on the performance investigation of a two-stage air-cooled silica gel + water adsorption cooling cum desalination system. Prior to joining IISc, she worked at General Electric (GE) Aviation Division, Bangalore. Her broad research interests include Adsorption, CO2 capture, Thermal management, and Computational methods for heat and fluid flow.

Professor Fateme Rezaei is Doshi Endowed Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Missouri S&T. She obtained her PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Monash University in Australia and LTU in Sweden in 2011. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech before she joined Missouri S&T in 2014. Her research focus broadly lies at the interface of chemical, materials science and environmental engineering, and the overall goal of her research group is development of advanced materials and processes for separation, purification, and storage applications. She is the author of over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles and has received several awards including 2021 ACS Women Chemists Committee (WCC) Rising Star Award; 2020 UM System president’s Award for Career Excellence-Early Career; 2018 Energy & Fuels Award for Excellence in Publication; as well as 2021 and 2018 Missouri S&T Faculty Research Award. She is the Associate Editor of ACS Energy & Fuels journal and editorial member of Journal of CO₂ Utilization and Frontiers in Energy Research.  

Klaus Feio Soares Richard is a third year Doctoral student at The Chemical Engineering Department of Federal University of Ceará(UFC), Fortaleza, Brazil. His research focuses on the modelling and simulation of adsorption processes such as Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) and Moving Bed Temperature Swing Adsorption (MBTSA) and the application of Machine Learning on Chemical Engineering Processes.

Dr. Anne Streb is a Development Specialist at Climeworks AG. She focuses on the development, evaluation and optimization of adsorption processes and sorbent systems for direct air capture of carbon dioxide. She holds a MSc from KIT, Germany and a PhD from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Professor Paul A. Webley is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Monash University, Director of the Woodside Monash Energy Partnership (WMEP) and Director of the ARC Hub for Carbon Utilisation and Recycling. He received his MScEng and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from MIT.  He has over 30 years combined industry and academic experience in the development and management of clean energy technologies, especially carbon capture technologies.  The underlying theme of Webley’s research is technology for environmental and energy applications including:  CO₂ capture and utilization systems for the industrial and energy sectors, hydrogen generation, storage and utilization technologies, design of energy efficient thermodynamic systems, and negative emissions technologies.  He has led and delivered major outcomes for academia and industry through numerous ARC Discovery, Linkage, CRC, and Industrial Transformation projects.  He has also commercialised carbon capture technology with start-up companies, and has 10 patents.