Energy Efficiency, GHG Emissions, Industrial  -  May 7, 2024

Georgia Tech, Meta Partner to Create Database for DAC Tech

Georgia Tech and Meta collaborated to produce a massive database, which could make it simpler and quicker to design and implement direct air capture technologies. 

Direct air capture, a technology that pulls carbon dioxide out of ambient air, is one tool that can be used to lower emissions but needs to be adjusted based on the humidity, temperature, and air flows for each location.

The project, named OpenDAC, could accelerate climate solutions the planet desperately needs, according to news from Georgia Tech. The open-source database enabled the team to train an AI model that is faster than existing chemistry simulations. 

The team’s research was published in ACS Central Science, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

“For direct air capture, there are many ideas about how best to take advantage of the air flows and temperature swings of a given environment,” says Andrew J. Medford, associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a lead author of the paper. “But a major problem is finding a material that can capture carbon efficiently under each environment’s specific conditions.”

The idea was to “create a database and a set of tools to help engineers broadly, who need to find the right material that can work,” Medford added. 

The database contains reaction data for 8,400 different materials and is powered by nearly 40 million quantum mechanics calculations, which is believed to be the largest dataset.

Machine learning from Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team partnered with Georgia Tech since it has expertise in materials chemistry as it relates to carbon capture.

The database predicts the metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOF interactions and the energy output of those interactions - Georgia Tech professors and students provided all the inputs for the database. 

The Georgia Tech and Meta teams identified about 241 MOFs of exceptionally high potential for direct air capture.

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