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There is no single carbon-capture sorbent that is best for every site. The PrISMa platform evaluates solid materials alongside the gas being treated, the capture process, local utilities, costs and lifecycle impacts. Its central lesson is that a material’s laboratory performance does not, by itself, tell an operator whether it is the right choice for a particular plant.
What is PrISMa carbon capture?
PrISMa stands for Process-Informed design of tailor-made Sorbent Materials. It is a research platform for assessing solid sorbents in the context of a specific carbon-capture application—not a commercial capture system or a catalogue declaring one material the universal winner.
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A case is shaped by the CO2 source, its destination or sink, the capture technology, available utilities and the site’s region. That context matters because a sorbent that performs well on a simple laboratory measure such as selectivity may fare less well once energy needs, product requirements, cost and environmental impacts are considered.
In a 2024 study, Charalambous and colleagues described a platform that links four analytical layers:
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- Materials: Experimental data or crystal structures are used to predict adsorption thermodynamics for CO2, nitrogen and water.
- Process: Material and equipment inputs are used to estimate outcomes such as CO2 product purity, recovery, productivity and energy requirements.
- Techno-economics: The process is assessed for technical and economic viability.
- Lifecycle assessment: Environmental impacts across the plant’s lifetime are evaluated.
The authors reported 50 key performance indicators (KPIs), comparisons across more than 60 case studies in five global regions, and an interactive visualization tool representing more than 1,200 materials. Those figures describe the 2024 study and platform; they are not a verified count of what is currently available in the live tool.
Why does the best option depend on the location?
A capture material is part of a process, and a process operates within local conditions. The platform compares factors that can change both the result and what “best” means:
- Source gas: CO2 concentration and other characteristics differ among sources such as cement, coal and natural-gas combined-cycle plants.
- Product and destination: Required CO2 purity and the intended sink affect process requirements.
- Capture configuration: The study considered, among other configurations, temperature swing adsorption (TSA) and temperature-vacuum swing adsorption (TVSA).
- Local utilities: Electricity price affects economics, while the emissions associated with electricity affect lifecycle climate impact.
- Material and operating demands: Working capacity, energy use, moisture sensitivity, and the resources needed to manufacture the sorbent all affect its overall performance.
That is why ranking materials by one KPI can mislead. The study found that materials leading on one measure did not necessarily perform well on others, and that rankings changed between the natural-gas combined-cycle, coal and cement cases.
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| Application or comparison | Reported finding | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Coal and cement | The study identified solid-sorbent materials that outperformed the monoethanolamine (MEA) benchmark on selected measures. | This is a result for the studied cases and measures, not proof that solid sorbents outperform MEA in every plant or on every KPI. |
| Natural-gas combined-cycle | In the study’s reported comparison, it did not find materials with lower net carbon-avoidance cost than MEA. | The finding applies to that lower-CO2-concentration case and the modelled comparison; it is not a universal verdict on sorbents or natural-gas plants. |
| UK cement, TVSA | After optimization, the paper reported a net carbon-avoidance cost about €7 per tonne of CO2, or about 12%, lower. | This is a model-specific result for the paper’s UK cement TVSA case. |
| UK cement, TSA | After optimization, the paper reported a net carbon-avoidance cost about €9 per tonne of CO2, or about 14%, lower. | This is a model-specific result for the paper’s UK cement TSA case. |
The cost improvements in the UK cement examples should not be read as expected savings at another site. They belong to the paper’s modelled cases and configurations.
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How do cost and climate impact differ?
Capture cost and net carbon-avoidance cost answer different questions. In the paper, the simpler capture-cost measure does not account for lifecycle climate impacts; net carbon-avoidance cost does. A process can therefore look attractive economically without delivering an equally strong climate result.
Regional conditions can push the measures in different directions. In the study’s model, Switzerland’s hydro-dominated electricity grid lowered climate impact, while electricity cost affected the economics. A location with cheaper power is not automatically the location with the lowest-emissions capture process, and a low-emissions grid does not by itself establish that a process is economical.
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The lifecycle analysis also found material/process combinations whose climate-change impact exceeded 1 kg CO2-equivalent per kg of CO2 captured. The paper associated such outcomes with factors including low working capacity, high material or energy requirements, and synthesis of materials containing scarce, high-impact metals. This applies to some combinations evaluated in the study, not to carbon capture as a whole.
Do moisture and real flue-gas conditions change the result?
They can. Water can affect adsorption, and the study notes that moisture slippage may undermine some materials with high affinity for water. It also examined non-ideal mass transfer; in that analysis, about 60–70% of materials remained top performers. That is a model result, not a field-validation rate or a guarantee of performance at an operating plant.
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The platform’s modelling cannot capture every condition in real flue gas. In Chemistry World’s 2024 coverage, University of Edinburgh mechanical engineer Hannah Chalmers cautioned that “modelling work can never fully replace going into the lab and doing stuff”. Pilot projects matter because they can reveal how materials and processes behave with real gas mixtures and operating conditions.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should an operator use the comparisons?
PrISMa is most useful as a screening and comparison framework. A sensible evaluation starts with the site’s actual problem, then tests candidate materials against the full set of relevant constraints rather than selecting a winner from a single ranking.
- Define the case: Specify the CO2 source, required product purity and destination, capture configuration, location and available utilities.
- Compare relevant outcomes: Look at recovery, productivity, energy requirements, cost and lifecycle climate impact together. A strong score on one KPI does not settle the choice.
- Check local sensitivities: Consider electricity price and emissions, as well as moisture and other features of the gas stream that could change performance.
- Investigate scale-up: Treat promising candidates as leads for more detailed process modelling and experimental work, including questions of sorbent durability and manufacturing.
- Validate before deployment: Progress toward pilot and demonstration stages only with further evidence. The platform’s screening results alone do not establish commercial readiness.
The platform is designed to connect materials science and process engineering with decisions by industrial operators, investors and environmental managers. It helps narrow and compare options; it does not replace site-specific engineering or operating evidence.
Where can readers inspect the cases?
The 2024 Nature paper says that results for its reported cases were deposited on Zenodo and that its interactive visualization tool is hosted on Materials Cloud, where users can inspect case studies and KPIs. The authors also said that updates and new case studies would be made available through Materials Cloud. The platform software for the analytical layers was available from the corresponding authors upon request, according to the paper. These are access routes reported in 2024; current contents and update cadence are not established here.
The primary study is Charalambous et al., “A holistic platform for accelerating sorbent-based carbon capture,” published in Nature 632, pages 89–94, on 17 July 2024. Julia Robinson’s Chemistry World report, “Carbon capture gets personalised touch to match best tech with right location,” followed on 30 July 2024 and includes expert commentary.
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