A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin has just developed a way to store carbon captured from the atmosphere much faster and easier. According to Innovation News Network, it can be done without the harmful accelerants that current methods require.
The most common method of storing carbon today involves capturing it and injecting it into underground reservoirs, according to the news outlet. But this method risks leakage, groundwater contamination, and seismic issues. On top of that, some areas of the world just aren't geologically capable of doing this.
Other methods, like the use of amine-based adsorbents, are too energy-intensive.
The technique developed at UT Austin allows for the ultrafast formation of carbon dioxide hydrates resembling ice formations that can be buried at sea.
"Hydrates offer a universal solution for carbon storage," Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering professor Vaibhav Bahadur, who led the research, said, per Innovation News Network. "For them to be a major piece of the carbon storage pie, we need the technology to grow them rapidly and at scale."
The new method uses magnesium as the driving force of the hydrates that form six times faster than was previously possible using chemical promoters. Even better, the method is aided by seawater, making it easily doable for any country with a coastline.
All of this makes the hydrates a viable option for large-scale carbon storage.
"We are essentially making carbon storage available to every country on the planet that has a coastline," Bahadur said. "This makes storage more accessible and feasible on a global scale and brings us closer to achieving a sustainable future."
Carbon pollution is one of the primary drivers of the overheating of the planet, which leads to more severe extreme weather events and increased threats to the global food supply.
Ultimately, transitioning away from dirty fuels is the most crucial part of bringing Earth back into balance, but as detailed by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, carbon removal is expected to be one complementary part of the cure.
Fortunately, besides the incredible advancements being made all over the world working toward a transition to low-cost clean energy, there are also advancements in the effort to capture and store the carbon that's already in the atmosphere.
One exciting example is the recent announcement by a California-based startup for a North American facility that's expected to remove more than 120,000 tons of carbon from the air every year.
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