Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a material that can capture carbon dioxide created by industrial plants in ways previously considered impossible. According to Tech Xplore, the new material can capture carbon pollution at higher temperatures than what's ever been done before.
Industrial plants like those that produce steel or cement create a lot of carbon dioxide pollution, one of the main drivers of the overheating of the planet, contributing to extreme weather that can threaten lives and the global food supply. The global steel industry alone generates more than 3 billion tons of carbon pollution every year, and global cement production is not far behind. The latter generated nearly 1.8 billion tons of carbon pollution in 2022, with a trajectory to reach 3 billion tons before too long.
Current methods for removing carbon from industrial exhaust only work efficiently at temperatures between 100 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, the exhaust emitted from steel and cement factories can reach up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and other factories can produce exhaust that reaches over 900 degrees. The exhaust streams need to be cooled, which takes energy, water, and money. But this new technology looks to change that.
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The material developed at UC Berkeley is a type of metal-organic framework (MOF) that acts like a sponge to capture the carbon pollution.
"Our discovery is poised to change how scientists think about carbon capture," said researcher and co-author of the paper Kurtis Carsch. "We've found that a MOF can capture carbon dioxide at unprecedentedly high temperatures — temperatures that are relevant for many CO2 emitting processes. This was something that was previously not considered as possible for a porous material."
The material has an incredible capacity for absorption. Just one tablespoon of this porous material has the internal area of about six football fields.
The pores in the MOF developed by the researchers contain zinc hydride sites, which bind with carbon dioxide, and can capture more than 90% of the CO2 it comes into contact with. It can also work efficiently even in temperatures approaching 600 degrees Fahrenheit.
The researchers believe the technology they've developed will be necessary, as the transition to clean energy will be slower for some industries compared to others.
"We need to start thinking about the CO2 emissions from industries, like making steel and making cement, that are hard to decarbonize, because it's likely that they're still going to be emitting CO2, even as our energy infrastructure shifts more toward renewables," said researcher and co-author of the paper Rachel Rohde.
The researchers are currently experimenting with other variants of this MOF to see what other gases it can absorb, and also making modifications to see if it can absorb even more carbon dioxide.
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