Professor Sa Jeong-hoon's Team at Dong-A University Publishes Two Papers in Top Thermodynamics and Chemical Engineering SCI Journals

Professor Sa Jeong-hoon of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Dong-A University served as the corresponding author for two papers published in the SCI journals ‘Energy’ and ‘Separation and Purification Technology’.

Both journals are published by the global publisher Elsevier. ‘Energy’ ranks in the top 5% in the thermodynamics category of the Journal Citation Reports (Impact Factor 8.857), and ‘Separation and Purification Technology’ ranks in the top 10% in the chemical engineering category (Impact Factor 9.136), making them prestigious academic journals.

Professor Sa, along with master’s student Kim Kwang-beom (first author) and Dr. Lee Ju-dong and Dr. Hai Son Truong-Lam (co-authors from the Marine Plant Equipment R&D Center at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology), published the paper titled ‘Facilitating clathrate hydrates with extremely rapid and high gas uptake for chemical-free carbon capture and methane storage’ in ‘Energy’.

In this paper, Professor Sa’s team revealed the realization of world-class CO2 capture characteristics using silica sand without chemical injection or mechanical stirring.

The key challenge in CO2 capture technology using gas hydrates is to simultaneously achieve high capture rates and separation efficiency. However, this has been very difficult due to limitations in material and heat transfer properties during the hydrate formation process.

Previous studies attempted to improve this by injecting large amounts of chemical additives or applying mechanical stirring, but these methods raised concerns about environmental hazards and high energy costs, while still resulting in low gas capture performance.

Professor Sa Jeonghun (left) of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Dong-A University, and Master’s student Kim Kwangbeom.

Professor Sa explained, “When silica sand with a hydrophobically modified surface is used as a porous medium, it changes the interfacial properties in contact with water, enabling efficient gas diffusion.”

He added, “In this study, we confirmed that the previously reported highest records for CO2 capture rate and capacity within hydrates were surpassed by 55.3% and 21.6%, respectively.”

Professor Sa also published a paper titled ‘Advanced pre-combustion CO2 capture by clathrate hydrate formation with water-to-gas molar ratio optimization’ in ‘Separation and Purification Technology’.

In this paper, Professor Sa explained that to address the issue of capturing substances other than CO2 during the application of hydrate technology in pre-combustion CO2 capture processes, process variables (water/gas ratio, additive type/concentration, temperature/pressure) were optimized, achieving very high CO2 capture performance and separation efficiency.

He stated, “Recently, the importance of carbon neutrality has been emphasized worldwide, and by using inexpensive silica sand and environmentally friendly hydrate materials, we were able to dramatically improve the efficiency of CO2 capture processes.”

He further explained, “Because this technology utilizes the selectivity of hydrate formation reactions, it can also be applied to gas separation of methane, natural gas, hydrogen, nitrogen, and other gases, as well as to desalination and wastewater treatment processes.”

These papers have led to domestic patent applications and awards for outstanding papers from the Korean Society of New and Renewable Energy, and will be presented at the internationally renowned conferences PPEPPD and ICGH, which are authoritative in the fields of thermodynamics/phase equilibrium and gas hydrates.

This research was conducted with support from the BK21 Education and Research Group of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Dong-A University, the National Research Foundation of Korea, Korea Gas Corporation, and POSCO Holdings.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.