Members

IMMC

Mar Garcia Alvarez
PhD student
Ir. at UCL in 2016
Contact

Main project: Biomimetic fixation of CO2 as source of salts and glucose
Funding: External scholarship holder
Supervisor(s): Patricia Luis Alconero

Global warming and climate change are issues of great concern today. The increasing of greenhouse gases emissions to the atmosphere is responsible for various environmental problems. Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage can greatly reduce CO2 emissions from new and existing power plants. Membrane technology is highly considered as one of promising post-combustion technologies for reducing CO2 emissions due to its simple operability and energy efficiency.
The overall objective of this project is CO2 capture using membrane technology from flue gases by using bio-enzymes as catalysts by mimicking nature for converting into valuable chemicals.
Two enzymatic conversions will be studied in this project. The first one is based on the action of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which facilitates the reversible hydration of CO2 to bicarbonate. The second enzyme is RuBisCO (Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) carboxylase/oxygenase). The great advantage of using RuBisCO is that this enzyme converts inorganic carbon to its organic form through the formation of a relatively high-molecular weight ligand in the form of phosphoglyceric acid, which may subsequently form glucose.

IMMC main research direction(s):
Chemical engineering

Keywords:
membrane technology

Research group(s): IMAP

Recent publications

See complete list of publications

Journal Articles

1. Garcia Alvarez, Mar; Sang Sefidi, Vida; Beguin, Marine; Collet, Alexandre; Bahamonde, Raúl; Luis Alconero, Patricia. Osmotic Membrane Distillation Crystallization of NaHCO3. In: Energies, Vol. 15, no. 2682, p. 1-13 (2022). doi:10.3390/en15072682. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/259949

Patents

1. Luis Alconero, Patricia; Sang Sefidi, Vida; Garcia Alvarez, Mar; Sparenberg, Marie-Charlotte. CONTINUOUS PROCESS AND SYSTEM FOR THE PRODUCTION OF SODIUM BICARBONATE CRYSTALS. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/262649 http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/262649

Conference Papers

1. Lumami Kapepula, Vercus; Sang Sefidi, Vida; Garcia Alvarez, Mar; Bart Van der Bruggen; Luis Alconero, Patricia. Evaluation of commercial ro and nf membranes, used for the release of heavy metals in wastewater. 2021 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/253133

2. Sang Sefidi, Vida; Garcia Alvarez, Mar; Sparenberg, Marie-Charlotte; Luis Alconero, Patricia. Membrane crystallization in an integrated process for CO2 capture. 2021 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/241713

3. Garcia Alvarez, Mar; Sang Sefidi, Vida; Sparenberg, Marie-Charlotte; Luis Alconero, Patricia. CO2 capture and revalorization as carbonate crystals using membrane technologies. 2021 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/259479