Research for Industries (RFI) Lecture Series: Matthew Realff & Christopher Jones

Out of thin air: Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide to walk our carbon footprint backwards

It is likely that to avert temperature increases greater than 1.5C society will need negative emission technologies – the ability to reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. Enhancing natural systems uptake is one route, but we will need greater capacity than this can provide. This talk will describe Direct Air Capture (DAC), removing CO2 with a technological system, and the progress towards practical systems for achieving this goal.

Speaker Details

Matthew J. Realff
Professor Realff is the David Wang Senior Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. Professor Realff joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 1993. Professor Realff received his Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London and his Ph.D. from MIT in the area of process systems engineering. He was an NSF program director 2005-2007 where he led initiatives in Resilient and Sustainable systems. He has fostered multidisciplinary research efforts at Georgia Tech through leadership positions in the Strategic Energy Institute and Renewable Bioproducts Institute.

Professor Realff has conducted research on carbon capture systems over the last decade and has recently focused on Direct Air Capture system design, simulation and analysis. He collaborates with Professors Jones and Lively on this topic where his analyses help drive experimental work on materials and contactors for more effective system design.

Professor Realff has served as a board member of GreenBlue since 2007 which is the parent non-profit for the Sustainable Packaging Coalition a multi-stakeholder organization with over 500 members dedicated to improving packaging sustainability. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the new Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing part of the AIChE Journal family. He has recently been elected a Fellow of the AIChE.

Christopher W. Jones
Professor Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 2000 and then rose through the ranks, including serving as Associate Vice President for Research from 2013-2019, with a period as Interim Executive Vice-President for Research in 2018.

Professor Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 2000 and then rose through the ranks, including serving as Associate Vice President for Research from 2013-2019, with a period as Interim Executive Vice-President for Research in 2018.

Dr. Jones leads a research group that works on materials, catalysis and adsorption. He is known for his extensive and pioneering work on materials that extract CO2 from ultra-dilute mixtures such as ambient air, which are key components of direct air capture (DAC) technologies. He served on the National Academies Consensus Study on Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration in 2017-2018, focusing on DAC.

He also has produced an extensive body of work in catalysis. Dr. Jones was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and is Vice-President of the North American Catalysis Society. He was tapped in 2020 to launch the new open access American Chemical Society journal, JACS Au. (Read as Jacks Gold)

Jones’ work in both catalysis and CO2 separation has been recognized by numerous organizations including the ACS, ASEE, AIChE and the North American Catalysis Society. Georgia Tech has recognized Jones as the Institute’s Outstanding Faculty Research Author (2011), for Research Program Development (2012) and for Research Innovation (2021).