Chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the US and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The process for making the material could be scaled down to capture emissions from vehicle exhaust or other sources of carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel burning makes up 75% of all greenhouse gases in the US.
The new material is easy to make and can be used in a variety of ways.
We wanted to think about a cheap and easy source of carbon capture material. Jeffrey Reimer is the Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
The so-called melamine porous network captures carbon dioxide with an efficiency comparable to early results for another relatively recent material. UC Berkeley chemists created the first carbon-capture MOF in 2015, and subsequent versions have proven to be even more efficient at removing carbon dioxide from flue gases.
The author of the paper, Haiyan Mao of UC Berkeley, said that the materials used in the paper are more energy efficient than most MOFs. The low cost of porous melamine makes it possible for it to be used widely.
Mao said that the study focused on cheaper material design for capture and storage. A general industrialization method for sustainable CO 2 capture is created by this work. We hope we can design a future attachment for capturing car exhaust gas, or perhaps an attachment to a building or a coating on the surface of furniture.
The work is being done by a group at UC Berkeley led by Reimer, as well as a group atStanford University led by Yi Cui, who is director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. The co-first author of the book is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley.
It will be carbon neutral by the end of the century.
A major interim strategy is to capture emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and store the gas underground or turn it into usable products. To reach an ambitious flue gas CO 2 capture efficiency target of 90%, the U.S. Department of Energy has announced $3.18 billion worth of projects. Net zero carbon emissions is the U.S. goal.
Carbon capture isn't feasible. The best method of piping flue gases is through liquid amine. The carbon dioxide needs large amounts of energy to be released so that it can be stored underground. The amine mixture needs to be heated to between 120 and 150 degrees Celsius.
The CO 2 is captured at about 40 degrees Celsius, slightly above room temperature, and released at 80 degrees Celsius, below the boiling point of water. Not having to heat the substance saves energy.
In its research, the Berkeley/Stanford/Texas team focused on the common polymer melamine, which is used not only in Formica but also inexpensive dinnerware and utensils, industrial coating and other plastic products. The researchers thought they would be able to absorb CO 2 if they treated the powder with formaldehyde.
Adding another amine-based chemical, DETA, to bind CO 2 could be a way to improve the effect. Nearly all the carbon dioxide in a simulation flue gas mixture was absorbed within about 3 minutes, thanks to the addition of cyanuric acid.
It was possible to use the material over and over again.
Mao and her colleagues conducted research to understand how carbon capture works. During repeated cycles of carbon capture and regeneration, the hydrogen bonds formed between the cyanuric acid and the melamine network help prevent DETA from leaking out of the pores.
What Haiyan and her colleagues were able to show with these elegant techniques is exactly how these groups interplay, how CO 2 reacts with them, and how she can cycle CO 2 on and off many times. The rate at which CO 2 is adsorbed is very fast. It's incredibly cheap and easy to make, and all the practical aspects have been met.
Mao said that they used solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to understand the mechanism of the reaction. The work encourages the evolution of porous materials research from trial-and-error methods to rational, step-by-step, atomic-level modulation.
The carbon capture efficiency of the porous networks is being improved by tweaking the amine group. Dynamic combinatorial chemistry is used to vary the proportions of ingredients to achieve CO 2 capture.
Hierarchical carbons made from pine wood, combined with a carbon sphere and Graphene oxide, can be used to remove carbon dioxide from the air. In order to design better materials for carbon capture from the environment and energy storage, Reimer developed solid-state NMR. Cui developed a robust and sustainable solid-state platform and fabrication techniques for creating new materials.
More information: Haiyan Mao et al, A scalable solid-state nanoporous network with atomic-level interaction design for carbon dioxide capture, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6849 Journal information: Science Advances
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