NETL Director Marianne Walck spoke at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall Meeting recently at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. She was invited to present as part of ACS’s Women in Energy Symposium and discussed NETL research on a variety of topics related to carbon management and sustainable resource development. Key NETL researchers also made presentations.

ACS meetings and expositions are where chemistry professionals from around the nation meet to share ideas and advance scientific and technical knowledge. The meeting agenda included technical sessions, career development, networking, student programming, and exhibitions.

She told the meeting participants that NETL’s work has helped prove the technical and commercial viability of carbon capture, carbon transport, and geologic storage. She said the work will help the nation achieve decarbonization and net-zero goals, build a sustainable natural gas supply chain to meet the energy needs of the country and develop a secure domestic supply of critical minerals/rare earth elements to support our economic and national security.

In addition to Walck, ACS attendees heard presentations from NETL’s David Luebke, Yee Soong, Thuy Duong Nguyen Phan, Jan Steckel and Ping Wang.

Luebke is technical director of NETL’s Direct Air Capture (DAC) Center on NETL’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, site. Luebke spent the first 12 years of his career as a carbon capture researcher at NETL before leaving in 2014 to try his hand at entrepreneurship. He founded two successful companies and returned to the Lab to lead the DAC Center.

DAC technologies capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) directly from the ambient air in contrast to point source capture processes. In 2022, Congress authorized $25 million for the development of the NETL DAC Center that will serve as a comprehensive center to help partners test innovative DAC technologies and accelerate commercialization of those technologies.

Yee Soong is part of an NETL team that works on extracting rare earth elements (REE) from coal fly ash by using a combination of physical separation and chemical extraction techniques. He is also a key member of an NETL team that studies biogeochemistry and chemical reactions to help develop more effective ways to store CO₂ underground and enhance production of oil and natural gas, all while protecting the environment for future generations.

Nguyen Phan works with a team of NETL and University of Pittsburgh researchers that developed a record-setting catalyst that electrochemically converts CO₂ and water into formic acid, which can be used as a hydrogen carrier in the new clean energy economy.

Steckel has led numerous research projects at NETL that apply computational methods for materials design. She served as the technical task coordinator for computational tasks in the carbon capture field work and removal proposals.

Wang is a principal investigator on numerous projects related to waste gasification and adsorption and removing contaminants in water. She has experience in mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering and conducts research on advanced thermochemical processes of converting carbonaceous materials to energy, in the form of solid, liquid and gaseous fuels.

Founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress, ACS is one of the world’s largest scientific organizations with more than 200,000 members across 140 countries. Its mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By using its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.