Exotic powder removes carbon dioxide from air at record speed

Exotic powder removes carbon dioxide from air at record speed

alec rune

This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. ocean reporting network.

Scientists and engineers are developing large machines to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but the technology also consumes large amounts of energy and money, costing up to $1,000 per ton of carbon dioxide captured.₂. Chemists at the University of California, Berkeley have created a yellow powder they say can boost the field by absorbing carbon dioxide.₂ It’s much more efficient.

Detailed climate projections show the world needs to remove far more carbon dioxide₂ than what we are currently doing to meet our climate goals. The United States is investing billions of dollars in startups developing direct air capture (DAC) technology, which uses fans to blow air through alkaline materials that combine with slightly acidic carbon dioxide.₂. Along with lye and crushed limestone, common alkaline substances are amines, compounds usually manufactured from ammonia.

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University of California, Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou and professor Omar Yaghi embedded amines into crystalline compounds known as covalent organic frameworks with large surface areas. The resulting powder, which they named COF-999, is a microscopic scaffold of hydrocarbons held together by super-strong carbon-nitrogen and carbon-carbon bonds, like those found in diamond. Amine stays in the open space of the scaffold and tries to capture carbon dioxide₂ Molecules passing through. When Zhou and Yaghi pumped air into a tube filled with powder, the CO was captured.₂ This is the highest speed ever measured, they write in a recent paper. nature I will study in October. “We were cleaning CO₂ It’s completely out of the air,” says Yagi.

Besides equipment, the largest cost for DACs is often the energy to heat the absorber to release the captured CO.₂collected in tanks and later injected underground or sold to industry. CO is released from the powder₂ When heated to 60 degrees Celsius, it is much lower than the 100 degrees Celsius or more required in current DAC plants. Powder was again deployed to capture CO₂ From the sky. The study found no significant decrease in performance after more than 100 catch-and-release cycles.

The COF-999 compound also has the potential to compete with liquid amines used in carbon capture and storage scrubbers in smokestacks at refineries and power plants, Yagi said. It is light enough that 200 grams can emit the same amount of CO2.₂ The tree’s ability to grow into a large tree within a year also means it has the potential to remove carbon from ship exhaust gases.

Companies already produce similar materials, metal-organic frameworks, to capture CO.₂ It is also used as a gas mask for protection from chimneys and from dangerous chemicals. In these crystal structures, very strong bonds are formed between metal compounds rather than hydrocarbons. But Yagi, who runs a company that makes both types of materials, says COF-999 is more durable, water resistant and more efficient at removing carbon dioxide.₂ Better than the leading metal-organic framework. a nature communications A study published in September reported that another covalent organic framework based on phosphate bonds also has the potential for carbon capture.

COF-999 powder has not yet been tested in real-world applications, said Jennifer Wilcox, a chemical engineer at the University of Pennsylvania who previously worked on carbon removal at the U.S. Department of Energy. For example, if airflow is too restricted when coating a filter or forming it into a pellet, energy consumption by the fan can increase. Wilcox says these types of engineering characteristics “ultimately end up determining cost.”