June 4, 2025

As climate change threatens ecosystems, intensifies weather events and upsets key food growing regions, the climate crisis has become one of the most important issues facing the planet.

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere are the primary contributor to climate change, with these levels driven primarily by human activities. Humans can reduce the amount of CO₂ entering the atmosphere by deploying carbon capture technology at the source of emission, and Seneca Applied Research is working with Markham, Ont.-based Ionada Inc. on advancing this technology.

Existing systems are designed to capture the CO₂ emitted by large producers, such as coal and natural gas power plants. However, a gap in carbon capture technology is allowing CO₂ emissions from smaller-scale producers to slip away into the atmosphere. Seneca and Ionada are collaborating to fill this gap.

An Applied Research team comprised of Seneca students and faculty has built a refrigerator-sized “mini-plant” that engineers at Ionada can use to test new carbon capture systems, designed to cater toward smaller-scale emitters. These emitters can include condominiums, commercial buildings, transportation sources such as trains and marine vessels, oil and gas pipeline transfer stations and natural gas boilers on institutional buildings.

Research assistants Nicholas Kwan and Nikolai Lapin started building the first generation of the mini-plant in mid-2024 with guidance and supervision from Ionada and Principal Investigator Kyle Valdock, Professor, School of Environmental and Civil Engineering Technology.

“They spent the whole summer building the first mini-plant from scratch, working directly with the engineers at Ionada to plan it all out, purchase all the materials, construct it all together and do all of the programming so that it was automated as well,” said Dr. Andrew Paton, a PhD in chemical engineering and applied chemistry, and Seneca’s research manager for the project.

“And then in the fall, in a lab at Seneca, we started testing the first membranes.”

Inside the mini-plant, a flow of exhaust gas containing CO₂ simulates the flow of exhaust from a typical small-scale emitter. The gas is forced through semi-permeable membranes made from bundles of hollow fibres, inside of which flows a carbon-absorbing liquid.

As the gas passes across the membranes, the carbon-absorbing material pulls the CO₂ out of the gas phase and into the liquid-absorbing solution on the other side; it is the concentration differential that causes the CO₂ molecules to travel across the membrane from the gas exhaust stream and be captured by the mini-plant system.

“It just pulls the carbon dioxide out of the gas mix, into the liquid, and then it's captured,” Dr. Paton said.

Ionada’s scientists have developed multiple configurations of membrane capture systems using different membrane materials, as well as materials from various suppliers. Using the mini-plant, they will be able to test which configurations work best to capture carbon.

Membrane capture systems like the one Ionada is testing with Applied Research could be the solution to filling a gap in existing carbon capture technology.

Methods such as pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and amine scrubbing have been used in the industrial sector for several decades. However, these scrubbing technologies are energy intensive and not economical, especially for smaller-scale applications.

For example, PSA works best with large-scale industrial applications, and amine scrubbing poses problems such as high energy consumption, corrosion of carbon steel, easy degradation, and carcinogenic and adverse environmental effects that limit its commercial use. Amine scrubbing also produces a large amount of degraded solvent waste.

Dr. Paton said targeting small-scale emitters with membrane capture technology would be highly effective, due to the massive quantity of these emitters across the planet.

“The idea is having lots of units on these smaller emitters can actually capture a greater proportion of the emissions than from a few large emitters,” he said.

Ionada plans to have the first demonstration unit in place in late 2025. The company also plans to continue working with Seneca to improve performance and cost effectiveness in future iterations of the mini-plant.

In the meantime, Dr. Paton encourages students from all programs at Seneca to apply for Applied Research positions through Seneca Works.

“We have about 40 to 45 applied research projects in any year across every school,” he said.

Of the initial five research assistants involved with this project, four received job offers from Ionada, with two assistants accepting those offers.

“I think a great thing that we've seen coming out of this research is our research assistants are getting jobs with [company partners] directly,” Dr. Paton said.