Economic and stable solid adsorbents enabling reduced CO₂ capture cost Prof. Minkee Choi's group transferred their technologies on solid CO₂ adsorbents to ECOPRO on October 1, 2018. ECOPRO is a company specialized in providing various environmental solutions based on catalysis and adsorption technologies.

From 2014, Choi`s research group has focused on the development of solid adsorbents for post-combustion CO₂ capture from coal power plants. Their research has been supported by the "Korea CCS 2020 Project" (Ministry of Science and ICT). Through their research works, Prof. Choi and his group members have developed advanced amine-containing CO₂ adsorbents that are highly stable under the practical conditions of temperature swing and require significantly reduced regeneration heat (< 3.0 GJ/ton_CO2) compared to the previously reported adsorbents. They rationally designed the molecular structures of amine polymers as well as the porous architectures of silica supports to simultaneously achieve large CO₂ working capacity, high thermochemical stability, fast adsorption kinetics, and the scalability of material synthesis. Their original ideas were reported in several important papers (e.g., Nature Communications, 2016, 7, 10922; Nature Communications, 2018, 9, 726) and filed with six patents.

From 2019, Choi`s research works will continue through the support of Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. The developed adsorbent will be tested in bench-scale and pilot-scale CO₂ capture units in the coming years. Ultimately, the adsorbent will be tested in the large-scale CO₂ capture unit of the 10 MW coal power plant located in Hadong, Korea in 2021. Prof. Choi said, "Because of the relatively short research period, the solid adsorbent technology is still in the early stages of technology development and additional improvement should be made for its successful commercial implementation. However, considering the significant advances made over the past few years, I believe that the technology can compete with the conventional liquid amine scrubbing processes in the near future. Even though conventional amine scrubbing processes have been optimized for many decades, our technology is already quite close to them."