Carbon Sequestration

As far as fighting climate change is concerned, "one whale is worth thousands of trees," the IMF has said. But reports suggesting that trees therefore pale into insignificance compared to whales are missing the point.

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method for pulling carbon dioxide out of a chimney flue at a power plant or even just ambient air. The new device is a specialized battery that absorbs CO2 while charging, then releases it for industrial use.

Capturing carbon from the air and sequestering it is emerging as a viable strategy, and now scientists have developed a new method to turn CO2 gas back into solid coal, that can then be buried, or even used for electronic components.

A promising new technology developed at Canada’s University of Waterloo hinges on a special kind of powder that could be applied as a filter at power plants to gather CO2 molecules at the source, and is claimed to offer double the efficiency of the materials that are currently available.​

Climeworks is a Swiss company at the vanguard of carbon capture technology, and having just completed a year-long pilot project collecting C02 at the world’s first negative emissions power plant, is rather optimistic about the way things are headed.

​It was back in 2011 that we first heard how Virgin Atlantic Airways was planning to use an eco-friendly aviation fuel made from captured steel mill waste gases. A successful test flight followed in 2016, and the fuel has now been utilized in a commercial flight for the first time.

​After opening the world’s first commercial Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant designed to pull CO2 out of the air, Swiss company Climeworks is now joining forces with a geothermal power plant in Iceland to create the world’s first “negative emission” power plant.

To reduce the severity of climate change, it’s not enough to just curb the rise in emissions –technologies that actively pull more CO2 out of the atmosphere will also be vital. To that end, a new CO2-filtering plant has just opened up near Zurich.

Dcientists at the University of Central Florida have come up with synthetic material that draws on visible light from the sun to produce solar fuels, sucking harmful CO2 out of the air in the process. ​

Carbon capture technology typically takes the form of sponge-like materials that are used to trap excess CO2 at the places it is released. Now, scientists have created a means of drawing it right out of the ambient air – and the technology involves using a liquid to turn the CO2 gas into crystals.

​The wonder-material graphene may have a new trick to add to its resume: converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuels. A team at Rice University has used nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots to create ethylene and ethanol, with stability and efficiency close to that of electrocatalysts like copper.

Capturing carbon emissions at the source is an important weapon in the fight against climate change​. Now scientists have developed an efficient low-cost technique that makes use of an ultra-thin membrane, like a bubble, to filter CO2 out of flue gas.