Carlos Morales-Guio, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received a 2020 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award to support collaborative research in capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transforming it into solid carbon.
Morales-Guio and his colleagues Kathryn Knowles and Robert Coridan each received a $55,000 grant. The team will look into capturing carbon dioxide directly from air and converting it into solid carbon at low temperatures. The potentially efficient and low-cost method could produce a solid carbon for long-term carbon sequestration.
Morales-Guio is the director of the Laboratory of Electrochemical Systems Engineering. His research group seeks to understand how chemical reactions involved in the production of industrial chemicals, fuels and fertilizers are catalyzed, and how these same products could be extracted from water and air using renewable electricity instead of the traditional fossil sources.