Cornell University’s Professor wins Scialog award to advance methane mitigation

Phillip Milner, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, is on a project team that won a grant for their research related to methane capture.

Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and ClimateWorks Foundation made awards to seven cross-disciplinary teams of early career scientists in the third year of the Scialog: Negative Emissions Science initiative.

The initiative aims to catalyze advances in basic science that will enable technologies for removal of C02 and other greenhouse gases to become more efficient, affordable and scalable. Individual awards of $50,000 each will go to 19 researchers from institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

Working with two other researchers, Milner will tackle a project on “Electro-swing Modulation of Lipophilic Environments for Direct Air Capture of Methane,” funded by RCSA.

“Methane is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. However, methods for mitigating its emission from point sources such as landfills and removing it from air are essentially non-existent,” Milner said. “Our project aims to use renewable electricity to achieve low-cost capture of methane from various streams. We will use electricity to switch on and off the methane-affinity of materials.”