The Center for Postgraduate Studies and Research congratulates Lau Siew Kei, a master’s student in Chemical Engineering from XMUM School of Energy and Chemical Engineering for winning the Best Oral Presentation Award at the International Conference on Carbon Capture Science and Technology 2022 (CCST 2022), which was held virtually during 21-23 July 2022. Organized by Queen’s University Belfast, this conference aims to promote carbon capture research.
Lau Siew Kei presented his work “Comparative life cycle assessment on zeolitic imidazolate framework production for CO2 capture”, which was conducted under the supervision of Associate Professor Dr. Yong Wai Fen.
Zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) is promising for CO2 capture, raising the need for its sustainable production. In this work, the life cycle assessment (LCA) of various ZIF-8 synthesis methods, such as solvothermal (DMF), solvothermal (MeOH), microwave, sonochemical, mechanochemical, dry-gel conversion, and aqueous systems, was investigated. The findings indicated that the seven production methods have the highest impact on marine ecotoxicity, followed by human non-carcinogenic toxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity among the 18 categories of evaluation studies. It is also revealed that replacing the solvent of DMF with methanol remarkably reduced the influence on human health, ecosystem, and resources in the solvothermal (MeOH) method as compared to the solvothermal (DMF) method. As a whole, the mechanochemical method has the least impact on the environment because it has fewer production steps and is easy to operate.
Lau Siew Kei
