The scientist recently published their groundbreaking research in the international journal Science. The article is co-authored by Wits University’s Prof Diane Hildebrandt, Prof David Glasser, Dr Brendon Hausberger, Bilal Patel from the University’s Centre of Material and Process Synthesis and Benjamin Glasser from Rutgers University in the USA.Explaining their research, Prof Hildebrandt says, “It is widely accepted that the current levels of carbon emissions worldwide need to be reduced and where possible eliminated.
“There are essentially two mindsets as to how to achieve this reduction, while simultaneously not impacting on the supply of energy and fuels to an ever-growing industrial and residential base of users.
“The first is to collect the emitted carbon either at the source or from the atmosphere and to convert it into a useful non-polluting substance.
"The second method is to examine existing and new processes and make the changes necessary to reduce the emissions from these processes at the source. Our article in Science introduces a technique and the results thereof to achieve this latter approach.”
Minimising carbon dioxide emissions at the source has not been a traditional goal in designing plants and design techniques to do so are not well developed.
“Our research has enabled us to develop new methods to design processes with reduced carbon dioxide emissions. These methods enable users to identify and understand the causes and sources of emissions in a process design. Having understood these, it is relatively simple to eliminate unnecessary emissions and minimise the contributions from other sources,” explains Prof David Glasser.
He adds: “The methods are simple to use and only require readily available data for the higher levels of assessment. We believe that the method has demonstrated the potential to easily and rapidly identify novel processes and will improve existing processes to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions the world over.”
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