Climate change: A promising new method for absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

While the world has struggled to limit and reduce carbon dioxide emissions for decades, many companies have focused instead on developing technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Perhaps the most famous of these companies is Limeworks C) swiss.

Over the past 10 years, the company has developed devices for absorbing air from the atmosphere, purifying it from particulate carbon dioxide and storing it.

At one site in Iceland, carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere is pumped deep into the earth, where it is permanently turned to stone.

The company has recently started selling carbon dioxide removal equipment to a number of major companies such as Microsoft, Spotify and Stripe.

But one of the biggest problems with most current methods of capturing and removing carbon dioxide from the air is cost.

Although carbon dioxide is primarily responsible for global warming, its concentration is relatively low in the atmosphere, amounting to about 400 molecules per million in the air.

Therefore, large equipment and large amounts of energy must be available to absorb and remove carbon dioxide.

The scientists participating in the study say that the new method, which relies on the use of resins and other ready-made chemical compounds, has proven to be promising in terms of efficiency and cost.

The research team adopted a mechanism used decades ago in the water field and “modified” existing chemicals to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

During the experiments carried out by the research team, it was found that the new hybrid adsorption material is capable of absorbing three times the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the traditional materials used in this field.

Arup Sengupta, senior researcher on the team that prepared the study, affiliated with the American University of Lehigh, said: “As far as I know, there is no substance that has the ability to absorb carbon with a concentration in the air of 400 particles per million, like what we found, even if the carbon concentration in the air is 100,000 molecules.” per million.”

“This ability to capture large amounts of carbon dioxide and convert it into a very small solid is one of the most important advantages of our work.”

This disclosure was welcomed by those concerned in this field, although it is in its early stages.

“The exciting thing about this method is that the starting point is an existing technology applied in water,” said Katherine Peters, a geoengineering expert at Princeton University who was not involved in the research project. “The application of this technology to gaseous compounds is a novel idea.”

“The ability to sequester carbon dioxide is promising.”

One of the big challenges in this field is what to do with the gas captured from the air. Storing it underground or in former offshore oil wells is one widely used method.

But the new research says that with the addition of some chemicals, the carbon dioxide captured could be converted into sodium bicarbonate and stored simply and safely in seawater.

Sengupta says he now wants to set up a company to develop the technology on a large scale.

It is believed that removing carbon dioxide in this way would not only be crucial to limiting global warming, but could directly empower developing countries as well.

“We have to apply this technology in places like Bangladesh, Barbados or the Maldives, as these countries also have a role in this field and they should not always be victims of global warming.”

Some scientists are reluctant to focus too much on new and emerging technologies such as direct decarbonization of the air because they fear it will set back carbon-cutting efforts by governments and individuals.

But with rising emissions likely to fail to prevent global warming from exceeding the limits agreed in the Paris climate agreement, many feel that installing more direct air capture devices to clean the carbon, in addition to deep reductions in carbon emissions, is the best hope for averting the dangers of climate change. .

“It’s even more important now because we’re definitely going beyond the limits agreed upon in the Paris Agreement and we have to recover carbon from the environment,” said Professor Klaus Lackens, a pioneer in the field of carbon dioxide removal.

“DAC has to be cheaper to play a significant role. I’m optimistic it can do that.”

Professor Sengupta shares this optimism, believing that this new method can remove carbon dioxide for as little as $100 a ton.