Leire, a PhD student from UPV/EHU visited Professor Bi’s group at UBC from July 2022. She has done the preparation of the biomass samples to be fed into the gasifier, runs and analysis of the results. The gasification plant consisted of three stages: biomass gasification, syngas treatment and methanation. As mentioned above, a double bed unit was used for the gasification stage, since this configuration promotes heat and mass transfer. In these units, steam reacts with the biomass (in this case sawdust) in the gasification reactor, producing syngas and char. The char and the circulating bed material (in this case sand) pass into the char combustion chamber, where the temperature rises due to the exothermicity of the process. The hot solids leaving the combustion chamber return to the gasifier to provide heat to the gasification process. In this way, high carbon conversion and high syngas quality are obtained. The syngas from the gasification reactor and the flue gas from the combustion chamber are treated in separate gas cleaning trains. The operational complexity of large plants is well known. Accordingly, natural gas is first used to reach the reaction temperature and then air and biomass are introduced to reach the final reaction temperature by combustion. In the syngas cleaning stage, contaminants such as HCl, H₂S, tar, particulates, etc., are removed. The methanation stage consists of one reactor for the WGS (Water Gas Shift) reaction and two reactors for the methanation reaction.

Dr Gartzen Lopez from University of the Basque Country visited University of British Columbia, Canada, to exchange knowledge related to biomass gasification and low-carbon technologies.

CCST2022 has been successfully organised including 31 plenary and keynote presentations, 18 invited talked and more than 60 oral presentations. Interesting topics from world-leading researchers were presented and discussed. We thank all members of organisation committee, all speakers, chairs and participants for their contribution. Some nice pictures are attached below:

The BIOMASS-CCU coordinator is organising a CCST2022 conference, which is supported by the RISE project. The conference will focus on the discussion of carbon capture related science and technologies. It is free registration and a few awards will be presented.

More details could be found at: http://www.ccst2022.com.

Mr. Chen Zhang of Dr. Chunfei Wu’s research group at Queen’s University Belfast spent November and January 2022 as an academic visitor with Prof. Tao Wang and Dr. Long Jiang’s research group at Zhejiang University as part of the EU-RISE project. This visit and collaboration are primarily intended to learn about and create advancements in carbon neutrality. Professor Wang’s group focused on resin’s ability to capture and utilize ambient CO₂. Dr. Jiang’s research group is primarily concerned with the addition and utilization of CO₂ in industrial flue gases. Dr. Long Jiang, Mr. Chen Zhang, and Ms. Ying Ji conducted the 15% CO₂ adsorption experiment utilizing chemical activated bamboo charcoal samples and tried to modify the biochar material using polymer amine to increase the adsorption efficiency. This work is scheduled to be published in April 2022 in the journal of Separation and Purification Technology. This collaboration has significantly enriched the development prospects of biochar in the area of carbon capture and significantly bolstered academic exchanges between Queen’s University Belfast and Zhejiang University.