Researchers Have Discovered A Material for Capturing CO2 That Is Significantly More Affordable and Effective

Currently, bubbling industrial emissions through liquid amines is the most common, albeit energy-intensive, technique of trapping carbon dioxide for storage.

More energy-efficient and promising are MOFs and other porous materials.

Porous melamine networks have now been discovered by researchers to be an even more affordable and effective CO2 capture material.

Melamine, the primary component of Formica, can absorb CO2 from the exhaust and has lower regeneration costs than alternatives.

Cheap material for capturing CO2

(Photo : Chris LeBoutillier/Unsplash)

Chemists have developed a low-cost, simple, and energy-efficient method to collect carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a crucial objective for the United States and other countries as they aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Melamine, the primary ingredient in Formica, is a cheap polymer, as per ScienceDaily.

The method for creating the melamine material, which was just described in the journal Science Advances, may be scaled down to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from moving sources like automobile exhaust.

About 75% of all greenhouse gases produced in the United States are carbon dioxide, which is a byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

Jeffrey Reimer, Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the paper's corresponding authors explained that this is why we chose to start with melamine.

The so-called melamine porous network efficiently catches carbon dioxide, on par with preliminary findings for metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, a more recently developed material for carbon capture.

The first such carbon-capture MOF was developed in 2015 by UC Berkeley scientists, and later iterations have shown to be even more effective in removing carbon dioxide from flue gases, such as those from a coal-fired power station.

While stopping the combustion of fossil fuels is necessary to stop climate change, capturing carbon dioxide emissions and storing the gas underground or turning CO2 into useable goods is a significant interim measure.

In order to support cutting-edge and commercially viable carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy has already announced projects totaling $3.18 billion.

The ambitious goal is to achieve a flue gas CO2 capture efficiency objective of 90%.

By 2050, the United States wants to have net zero carbon emissions.

Carbon capture, however, is not at all financially practical.

Currently, the most effective method is passing flue gases through liquid amines that bind CO2.

But according to the paper's first author, UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Haiyan Mao, melamine-based materials require far less expensive raw materials, are simpler to create, and are more energy-efficient than conventional MOFs.

Because porous melamine is inexpensive, it may be used in a variety of applications.

Adsorption of CO2 by formaldehyde-treated melamine was slightly validated by testing, according to Mao, but it could be significantly enhanced by adding DETA (diethylenetriamine), another amine-containing substance.

Later, she and her colleagues discovered that adding cyanuric acid during the polymerization step greatly expanded the pore size and boosted CO2 capture efficiency: almost all of the carbon dioxide in a simulated flue gas mixture was absorbed within three minutes.

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How does carbon capture work?

Carbon removal is different from carbon capture.

In contrast to "carbon removal," which refers to removing pollutants previously released into the atmosphere, "carbon capture" refers to confining pollution as it is being produced, such as by installing a scrubber on a chimney, as per CBS News.

For significantly polluting locations like oil and gas fields, cement facilities, steel mills, or power plants powered by fossil fuels, carbon capture is hailed as a potential solution.

Consider cement. It is a necessary material that, after China and the United States, is the third-largest global emitter of carbon pollution.

The chemistry involved in turning raw materials into cement, not how the cement factory is heated up, accounts for 60% of the carbon emissions from a cement plant, according to Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Only a few carbon capture facilities are now in use in the United States; they are all located in industrial buildings like gas plants and fertilizer factories.

There have been several unsuccessful attempts to collect carbon from coal-fired power facilities.

A power plant in Kemper, Mississippi, shut down with its carbon capture plans years behind schedule and billions over budget.

Hydrogen Energy California, a planned coal-powered facility in Kern County, California, has had cost overruns and schedule problems.

The sole coal plant with carbon capture in the United States is the Petra Nova facility, which runs on coal and is located near Thompsons, Texas.

But as the price of oil fell and the facility could no longer sell its collected CO2 financially, its operator decided to shut it down in 2020.

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