Carbon Management
Applying scientific expertise to reduce emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
Quick facts
- Our carbon management research focuses on technologies to prevent emissions, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and recycle it into products.
- Expertise in materials science and engineering allows us to understand material properties and design optimal materials and devices for carbon management applications.
- We are exploring ways to improve the development process for scalable and cost-effective carbon management technologies.
Carbon management focuses on addressing carbon dioxide emissions and reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through capture, storage, and conversion techniques. At LLNL, our materials scientists and engineers work at the forefront of designing technologies, materials, and processes that cross-cut multiple areas of carbon management, including:
- Converting carbon dioxide into useful products like chemicals and fuels
- Preventing carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere
- Removing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere
Our researchers are involved across the spectrum of research and development activities, from fundamental science to design, development, and scale-up to implementation.
We leverage onsite expertise in a variety of areas—materials science, adsorption and reaction phenomena, multiphysics and multiscale modeling, chemical engineering, and advanced manufacturing—to improve technology performance and readiness in this area.
Our research supports LLNL’s climate and energy security mission.
Research focus areas
Our research activities concentrate on four main areas:
In the area of carbon capture and carbon removal, we study:
- The chemistry and physics of materials used in carbon capture from all sources
- Emission reduction through point-source carbon dioxide capture
- Atmospheric carbon dioxide removal through processes like direct air capture (DAC)
We use atomistic models to predict and understand the properties of new materials, which we then synthesize and test experimentally. Our testing leverages commercial and custom lab-to-bench scale adsorption and characterization equipment housed at LLNL.
We also leverage LLNL’s additive manufacturing (3D printing) capabilities to design, print, and test novel absorber packings. These packings help to both improve mass transfer in carbon capture solvents as well as scale up and validate new structured materials for low-energy carbon dioxide capture.
In a circular carbon economy, carbon dioxide is recycled or reused rather than released as waste. In this area, our research focuses on using renewable energy to convert carbon dioxide into chemicals and fuels that could help reduce our dependence on petroleum. Specifically, we study electrocatalytic and thermocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide into high-volume commodity chemicals like carbon monoxide, methane, and ethylene.
Our expertise in advanced manufacturing allows us to design new electrochemical reactors to control mass transport, achieving superior catalytic performance, activity, and selectivity.
Our research efforts also extend into new territories, which include:
- Strategies to combine carbon dioxide capture, carbon dioxide conversion, and/or biomass valorization to understand new reaction pathways
- Understanding the potential cost and energy savings from process intensification through approaches like reactive capture
Expertise in adsorption and interfacial phenomena, catalysis, and surface science make up the core of our investigations in carbon management. Guided by atomistic modeling, continuum-scale models, process design, and technoeconomic analysis, we develop novel materials and synthesize approaches to engineer catalytic interfaces and intrinsic material properties of interest.
Our work leverages advanced characterization tools such as:
- Gas adsorption, porosimetry, and electron microscopy
- In situ and operando vibrational, synchrotron x-ray, neutron, electronic, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and scattering techniques
These capabilities help us understand material properties and develop structure-property-performance relationships, which we in turn apply to designing higher performing and more durable materials for carbon upgrading and removal.
Carbon management technologies need quick, at-scale distribution to have the largest impact possible. However, long development pathways—with multiple avenues where technologies may fail—make it difficult to quickly move from conception to commercialization.
Our work, which is directed by process modeling, technoeconomic analysis, and systems contexts, aims to accelerate the development pathway for carbon management technologies. To do this, we use multiphysics and multiscale modeling to produce optimal reactor and component topologies that can be printed using advanced manufacturing methods and tested for superior performance compared to conventional designs.

Cross-cutting research
Our carbon management work crosscuts other work in degradation science. In this area, we rely on a combination of advanced quantum simulations and experimental materials synthesis and characterization to:
- Study the degradation mechanisms of soft matter, catalysts, and reactors used for capturing and converting carbon dioxide
- Apply fundamental insights to co-design materials and systems with improved lifetime and performance
Our work demonstrates how subtle chemical changes in materials can make materials last longer, offering potential cost savings for carbon capture technologies.
Learn more about carbon management research at LLNL
- Materials for Energy and Climate Security group website
- Mitigating Climate Change Through Materials Science
- Carbon Capture and Utilization Technologies
- Engineering the Carbon Economy