However, as I envision the energy future, I also see an opportunity to satisfy those needs with lower-carbon
energy. For comparison, I look to cell phones as a source of inspiration. Most cell phone owners in India and many other countries never owned a landline; they jumped right into mobile use. I’m hopeful the same thing could happen for developing
nations that are building new energy infrastructures, prioritizing the use of lower-emission energy sources like natural gas and renewables.
With these
advancements in lower-carbon supplies, we can meet the dual challenge of providing people around the world with reliable energy and fewer emissions.
All
it takes is scientific ingenuity and a lot of research.
Doing more with less
That’s where I come in. My role in ExxonMobil Research and Engineering (EMRE) is to help progress groundbreaking technologies and initiatives aimed at
meeting that dual challenge.
One particularly important piece of the puzzle, my area of expertise, is advanced separation. Right now, refineries separate
the different components of crude oil, like lubricants and gasoline, through a process called distillation – essentially boiling hydrocarbons. That process involves massive amounts of heat, making it energy intensive.
But what if refineries could separate products without heat?
I
worked with a team of experts from ExxonMobil, my alma mater Georgia Tech and the Imperial College London to answer that question. Our team developed a new non-phase change approach using filtration.
Specifically, we developed membranes that, under the right amount of pressure, could filter at the molecular level at room temperature. When scaled to industrial levels, the technology could significantly reduce ExxonMobil’s energy consumption
and emissions – and, in the process, shrink the carbon footprint of everyday products like gasoline and components used to make plastics.
And
that’s just the start.
Introducing energy 2.0
Looking ahead 20 years, I truly believe the membrane technology we’re using today to process oil and gas could also be a key enabler to carbon capture and
storage, a process called CCS. I became passionate about this research topic early in my career, even before coming to ExxonMobil. At age 26, I worked at General Electric Global Research and became one of the youngest principal investigators for a
team of researchers for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant. My work explored the use of ultra-thin filters to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants and yielded promising results in the lab that inspire my thinking
today.
The challenge is that, to really make an impact, these technologies need to scale up to real-world use. Refineries won’t accept a technology
just because it’s new and sophisticated; it needs to be safe, reliable and thoroughly tested. For scientists, this is when the fun begins. But this is a decade-long process of scaling from a concept in a lab to a robust commercial tool.
For most people my age, it’s tough to think in multiple years, rather than weeks or months. But I often look back just a generation ago to the late
1970s, when scientists began scaling up a new, ambitious method of desalination. Rather than boil sea water to rid it of salt, they created a cutting-edge membrane filter. Many critics derided the new technology, saying it would never work. And yet
today, companies are building energy-efficient desalination plants able to filter a record 900,000 cubic meters of water (that’s 240 million gallons) daily using the reverse osmosis membrane technology. Though it took time to scale
the idea, we’re seeing an impact that was once unimaginable.