Researcher Highlights
Re-thinking carbon in the renewable energy sector

Dr Rohan Stanger is driven to find new and clever ways to use our carbon resources. With a career in coal and biomass research, he is well placed to see a global energy future that is founded on carbon – but not in the ways we are used to.

Rohan, a chemical engineer, began his research career in coal utilisation. He’s well versed in particle processing, capturing CO₂ with oxy-fuel technology, and heating particles to make carbon, carbon materials and porous carbon structures. His focus now is to continue to push for new uses for coal and carbon in the renewable energy sector.

“We can’t continue to mine coal to burn. We know that’s just not sustainable and it’s a waste of good carbon!” declares Rohan.

“As a society, we need to think differently about how we use coal and our biomass resources. There are plenty of non-emissions-based uses for coal where CO₂ is not the end product. What excites me the most is producing high-value carbon products and seeing carbon take a much stronger position in the renewable energy sector.”

Thinking differently about coal and carbon

Relatively recently, Rohan developed a passion for what he calls a ‘big ticket item’.

“I love carbon. Carbon is beautiful and remarkable. It does things that other materials can’t, and I’m passionate about finding uses for it that don’t involve emissions,” he says.

With his vision of transforming industries, Rohan is hoping to invigorate the coal and biomass industries, the energy storage industry and both sides of politics.

“People talk about ‘green steel’ and ‘electrifying the grid’, but they haven’t thought about where carbon sits in some of these high-value applications,” explains Rohan.

“A critical need going forward is re-evaluating how we use carbon, and how we currently use carbon needs to change. A rethink is needed at the highest levels.”

According to Rohan, there are futuristic uses for carbon that don’t even exist yet. There is huge value in making carbon fibre cheaper so it can be used in industries such as vehicle and building. And the cheaper carbon is, the more widely used it can be.

The Australian carbon industry

A current stumbling block is that we don’t really have carbon manufacturing industries in Australia, and we import the products we require from elsewhere. For Rohan, the idea of making those products – particularly those related to energy storage – here in Australia is an exciting and attractive proposition.

“Carbon is already used in supercapacitors,” he explains. “We could potentially make carbon-based supercapacitors for half the price of lithium and use far less energy doing so. It will enable more efficient energy storage and its lifetime will be decades longer.”

Carbon is also used in electrodes for lithium ion-batteries, redox flow batteries, electric arc furnaces, aluminium manufacture and thermal energy storage.

“Clearly, we have the raw material, we have the infrastructure, and we want those jobs here in the Hunter. Again, it’s all about finding other uses for our natural product and reimagining our primary industry for future supply chains in Australia.”

In Rohan’s experience, people often question what kind of jobs will be available if we shut down the Hunter’s coal mining industry. Rather than shut it down, Rohan proposes repurposing the workforce’s existing skills.

Transforming coal and biomass into carbon will still involve solids handling at the front end, thermal engineering and heat transfer, and gas treatment at the back end. In essence, if the skills currently utilised in operating power stations were overlaid with those required to transform coal into carbon, it’s a perfect fit – a perfect overlay of skills.

So rather than continuing to send our coal overseas, processing it here will mean more jobs, not fewer.

“Our Hunter mines could supply the world’s carbon fibre and tonnes upon tonnes of supercapacitors. A far smarter way of operating would be not having all the jobs centred on digging up coal but making products and treating it for different end uses,” observes Rohan.

“The same is true for our bio-energy resources. We simply haven’t established the pathways to achieving their highest value.”

However, according to Rohan, the most significant problem is that we don’t yet have advanced manufacturing capability in the Hunter. Along with our carbon capacity, it’s the next vital step to transitioning away from fossil fuels and forging our way in renewables.

A practice-based approach to teaching

Rohan calls himself a ‘hands-on experimentalist’: taking an idea, designing and developing it into something practical and then (potentially) commercialising it. He believes there’s no point doing things that don’t have a value to society and the best route for doing that is through industry engagement.

“There’s really nothing like taking a concept and building an experimental system that works like I expected it to which tells my industry partners something they didn’t know before,” he enthuses.

He has done this with thermocalorimetry (heats of reaction), volatile evolution, molecular changes in coal and biopitch, and extrusion systems for shaped carbon.

That experimental and practical application approach is also front and centre of his approach to teaching, which he knows helps students become job ready.

“I really want to give students a solid understanding of industry before they enter it. Engineering at university is so theoretical that I think they crave hands-on experiences. I think interacting with industry so much gives me a great basis to teach our graduates,” he states.

“I hope that through my teaching, I get to train the next generation of engineers to go out and create new renewable energy industries in the Hunter. The University and the Hunter are a perfect breeding ground for a new type of engineer, and I’m fortunate to be a part of that.”