Title:

Novel Approaches to Capturing CO2 from the Air & Ocean

Speaker:

Dr. Katherine Hornbostel

Affiliation:

University of Pittsburgh

When:

Monday, April 3, 2023 at 1:00:00 PM   Add to Calendar

Where:

MRDC Building, Room 4211

Host:

Marta C. Hatzell
marta.hatzell@me.gatech.edu

Abstract

The latest climate change projections indicate that we will need over 10 Giga-tonnes per year of negative emissions by 2050 in order to stay below 1.5C global temperature rise. Direct air capture (DAC) and direct ocean capture (DOC) are two promising negative emissions technology areas that need further innovation before they are cost-effective options. In this talk, I discuss three of my current research projects: two DAC projects and one DOC project.

Biography

Dr. Katherine Hornbostel is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Her current research areas include membrane modeling for carbon capture, sorbent modeling for direct air capture, and developing novel membranes for direct ocean capture. Dr. Hornbostel received her BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 2010 and 2012, respectively. She then received her PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT in 2016. Her PhD thesis research under Dr. Ahmed Ghoniem involved modeling solid oxide fuel cells for power production from coal syngas. Dr. Hornbostel was a postdoc research fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, where she developed a model for encapsulated solvents for power plant carbon capture. Dr. Hornbostel spoke about her postdoc work on Freakonomics Radio Live and also received press for her breast pump invention that she created after having twins in grad school. Dr. Hornbostel was also recently named a Scialog: Negative Emissions Science Fellow, and recently received the Carbon Capture Future Star Award from the CCS&T Elsevier journal.