Carbon Dioxide Capture Tech Can Be Attached to Tailpipes
[Please note that this page contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase after clicking a link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.]
Researchers invented a technique to capture carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels using cheap chemicals already used in the industry. The research team thinks that the method is scalable in a way that may not only be for industrial chimneys but also vehicle exhausts as well as other mobile sources of carbon dioxide.
Published in Science Advances, this breakthrough used a polymer named melamine, the core component of Formica, a kind of laminated fused material. Melamine was merged with cyanuric acid and diethylenetriamine, and it was combined with formaldehyde. As a result, it formed nanoscale pores on top of the polymer.
This results in inventing a material that can absorb most of the CO2 in a gas blend in about three minutes. Additionally, this system is designed to work at a temp of 40°C (104°F) and does not release any carbon dioxide until it is heated to a temperature of 80°C (176°F).
The lead researcher, Dr. Haiyan Mao, from UC Berkeley, said, “In our study, we looked at a cheaper material design to store and capture and clarify the mechanism between the material and carbon dioxide.”
“This design produces an overall industrialization procedure towards a sustainable carbon dioxide capture tech using absorbent networks. We hope we can create a future attachment for capturing car carbon dioxide, or it might be an attachment for a building or maybe a coating for the furniture surface.”
The research team is looking to tweak the composition of the polymer to make an even more effective system. They look to design a scalable, practical, recyclable, high-capacity carbon-dioxide capture technology. Attaining this may be a game changer to help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
