Natalie's Project Page

Who:  I grew up in Park City, Utah spending all of my free time exploring the great outdoors. Being at the U gives me the chance to be a part of an amazing opportunity like ACCESS as well as take part in all of the activities I love.

My scientific/engineering interests:  As cliché as it sounds for an engineering student, I have always loved taking things apart and problem solving. Throughout my schooling, my favorite subjects were all of my STEM classes. It is the reason I decided to go into chemical engineering. I am excited to get to a point where I can make a real difference with what I am going to be learning.

Academic goals:  I am a chemical engineering major with a double minor in math and Spanish. I hope to continue working in my ACCESS lab and would like to publish before graduating.

Career goals:  After graduating, I hope to work in energy and sustainability. I care about the impact humans have on our planet and hope to use my passions in engineering to make a change in the world.

It has been known for more than 100 years that CO2 is a greenhouse gas its release from fossil fuel combustion affects the earth’s climate. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a promising technology for generating energy while capturing CO2. The advantage over other CO2 capture technologies is that CLC does not consume a significant amount of energy. Most other technologies do, consuming as much as 25-30% of the total energy produced. The conventional focus of CLC is to make it so that energy production from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas) is carbon-neutral; carbon comes from underground as fuel, gets processed, forms CO2 that is captured and then injected/sequestered underground. However, it is possible to do better and make the process CO2 negative by using biomass such as agricultural waste (e.g. parts of crops that we don't eat), forest waste (stumps, leaves, small branches) and municipal waste (the biogenic portion - food waste, paper containers, construction waste). With biomass the movement of CO2 is from the atmosphere, to biomass which we process by CLC to get energy, to CO2 and then to sequestration, i.e. we remove CO2 from the atmosphere while generating energy. Our research focuses on how biomass functions in a CLC system. To study that, we are rebuilding a small reactor (the QFB, quartz fluidized bed) to allow fuel particles to be introduced and also to be fed (and fluidized) with steam. At this point in the research project we do not have any preliminary results but hope to hypothesize what will come.

Chemical Looping Combustion of Biomass for Energy Production and Atmospheric CO2 Reduction Download Chemical Looping Combustion of Biomass for Energy Production and Atmospheric CO2 Reduction