This international MOF conference was a part of a series of biannual conferences started about one & half decades ago. The MOF2024 was the 9th edition of this prestigious biannual conference which provides a platform for exchange of ideas & knowledge, shaping the future in the field of porous materials. The conference was organized by the MRS (Materials Research Society), Singapore at Suntec Convention Centre and hosted a number of experts in the field of MOFs including special guest speakers Professor Omar Yaghi, Professor Susumu Kitagawa, Omar Farha and many more.
The conference was organized perfectly with 5 parallel sessions packed with plenary and invited lectures and poster sessions at the end. Almost 485 participants showcased their research during the poster session along with 190 oral talks apart from invited lectures, with a count of more than 700 attendees in the conference.
The most interesting part of the conference was the startups and projects based on carbon capture. A number of industry partners showcased their projects mainly focused on CCUS technology. Out of all, SVANTE: a leading industry in carbon capture and removal, was the main attraction due to their continuous research on porous materials (MOFs) for industrial carbon capture. They have made carbon capture filters which are based on structured adsorbent laminate beds in RAMs (rotary adsorption machines) to capture and remove CO2 from air and industrial flue gas streams. They have already setups these filters at various industrial streams all across the Canada and U.S. They signed a joint agreement with Climeworks in 2021 to work on direct air capture applications. The large-scale production & shaping of CALF-20 into pellets was also one of their spotlights. Apart from SVANTE, a number of other industrial projects and startup: PrISMA, Airthena, NovoMOFs; also presented their latest updates in CCUS technology. The talk by Jeffrey R Long on ongoing progress in field of MOFs for carbon capture in his research group was quite interesting. Omar Yaghi showed his inspiring work on use of MOFs in defence field for preparing protecting suits and face masks for soldiers from chemical warfare.
It was an ideal conference where the latest findings and ongoing research in carbon sequestration were showcased. A large number of participants focused on MOFs for carbon sequestration. The observation made based on this event clearly defines that direct airborne sequestration remains an urgent and ongoing challenge, while great progress has been made in point source carbon sequestration. The MOF2024 conference was a perfect platform to highlight about SolDAC. A number of attendees showed their interest to know about SolDAC during the poster presentation. All the visitors to the poster were provided with the project website and encouraged to follow more updates from SolDAC.
Written by Harpreet Kaur, University of Sant Andrews
