Carbon Dioxide

In an effort to mitigate human-caused climate warming, scientists are focused on ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One of the more novel ways to do this has just been announced by scientists employing a smart dual-method process.

Steam turbines still produce most of the world's power, but supercritical CO2 promises to be much cheaper, and 10% more efficient as a medium than water, using 10X smaller turbines. A US$155-million pilot plant is now complete in San Antonio.

Despite its many advantages, glass has one major Achilles' heel – it’s brittle. Now, engineers at Penn State have developed LionGlass, a new form that's not only 10 times more damage resistant, but requires significantly less energy to manufacture.

Concrete is one of the largest single sources of human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. Engineers at Washington State University have now developed a new method for making concrete that absorbs more carbon than it emits.

After water, concrete is the world’s most consumed material, and concrete production’s impact on the environment is significant. Researchers have discovered that an inexpensive ingredient may be the answer to reducing concrete's climate impact.

Concrete has been used in construction for thousands of years, it's everywhere. But its production is a major contributor to global carbon emissions. A project spun out of VTT Finland is looking to make concrete manufacture carbon negative.

Bacteria often get a bad rap, but in many cases they’re helpful little critters. Engineers have now developed a protective coating for buildings that’s loaded with bacteria, which absorb CO2 to produce a barrier against erosion by the elements.

Even slight adjustments to how we make cement and concrete can have a big impact on their environmental footprint, and as research continues to show, scientists working in this space are not short of ideas.

Leaves are impressive machines, converting sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into energy. Cambridge scientists have now created artificial leaves that can float on water, tapping into sunlight above it and water below to efficiently produce fuels.

In less than 18 months, Energy Dome has opened the first of its remarkable grid-level energy storage plants. These "CO2 batteries" store renewable energy over long periods and release it quickly, at less than half the cost of big lithium batteries.

"Artificial leaf" systems could play a key role in the fight against climate change, and a team of engineers has just picked up the pace with a solution that captures carbon dioxide at 100 times the rate of current technologies.

Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, but it comes at a huge environmental cost. Engineers in Japan have developed a new technique to make concrete by recycling waste concrete and combining it with captured carbon dioxide.