Major advances in carbon capture technology could provide an efficient and inexpensive way for natural gas-fired power plants to keep carbon dioxide emissions out of their stacks, an essential step in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming and adverse climate change.
![The atomic structure of a single hole in a metal-organic framework shows how carbon dioxide molecules (gray and red spheres) bind to tetraamines (blue and white spheres), forming a polymer of carbon dioxide molecules that bind to the inner framework. Low-temperature steam can push the molecules of the gas apart, allowing the material to be used over and over to capture more and more carbon from power plant emissions [Courtesy: Eugene Kim]](https://www.hayadan.org.il/images/content3/2020/11/MOFpore750px1.jpg.webp)
[Translation by Dr. Moshe Nachmani]
The new method for capturing carbon dioxide, developed by a collaboration of researchers from the University of California (Berkeley), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the ExxonMobil Corporation, is based on a particularly porous material called a metal-organic framework (MOF) ), which has been modified by amine molecules in order to capture carbon dioxide and the low-temperature emissions, in order to avoid transporting the gas for other uses/treatments, such as burying it underground.
As part of the experiments carried out, the method demonstrated the ability to capture carbon dioxide from combustion gases six times higher than other existing methods based on amine molecules, while demonstrating high selectivity while capturing more than ninety percent of the emitted gas. The process makes use of steam at a low temperature in order to keep the active ingredient effective for reuse, that is, using a lower amount of energy to capture the gas.
"In capturing carbon dioxide, steam stripping - a method in which direct contact with steam is used to remove the carbon dioxide, was a sort of 'holy grail' in the field. It does seem like the cheapest way to do it,” said senior researcher Jeffrey Long, a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. "These materials (MOF), at least from the experiments we have performed so far, look particularly promising." Since there is little, if any, market for most of the captured carbon dioxide, power plants will often inject most of the gas into the ground, or sequester it there, ideally within rock.
Emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel-powered vehicles, power stations and industry currently account for approximately sixty-five percent of all greenhouse gases that cause climate change, which have already resulted in the average temperature on Earth warming by 1 degree Celsius since the 19th century.
Today, power plants remove carbon dioxide from combustion emissions by bubbling the combustion gases through organic amines in water, which bind and remove the carbon dioxide. In the next step, the mixture is heated to a temperature of 150-120 mC in order to release the carbon dioxide, after which the liquids are reused.
The chassis are highly porous materials, for example - a chassis the weight of a paper clip has an internal surface area equal to that of a football field, an area entirely available for gas adsorption. The great advantage of the new method is the use of a chassis with amines that can capture carbon dioxide in different concentrations. The disadvantage of existing methods lies in the fact that the use of steam at a temperature of 180 mC further and further distances the amines inside the chassis, a fact that shortens the life of the active substance. The innovative material developed by the researchers uses four amine molecules (tetra-amine), which remain more stable at high temperatures and even in the presence of hot steam. "The tetra-amine is so strongly bound to the inner chassis that we are able to use very concentrated steam that does not destroy the material."
6 תגובות
Carbon dioxide is the basis of life - it is wickedness to capture it - plants stop photosynthesising at 150 parts per million and during the ice age it is expected to drop to 180 - we must burn as many fossil fuels as possible and raise the level to 1000 parts per million and save life on Earth
They brainwashed us and turned the essence of life into a dangerous gas
An even better method of sequestering carbon is by carefully fertilizing the oceans, which cover seventy percent of the Earth's surface.
This will increase the amount of plankton and consequently the amount of fish, and will decrease the acidity of the water, some of the plankton will sink
at the bottom of the ocean and will remain there. The cost of fertilizing is very low and the benefit will be enormous, as long as care is taken to maintain low levels of fertilizing
When do you implement such a system for diving in a closed circuit?
Or in space suits / spaceships / space stations? It will be possible to eject the FDF out, and if this is done with enough pressure, it is even possible to use the FDF as a propellant and move the station a little.
Plants are **yes** the most effective solution. They do it for free, and they also provide us with oxygen, food, medicine, a place to live.
And regarding the "temporary" nitrogen fixation: think about how much nitrogen is fixed in the forest compared to the road. The fixation is permanent.
It's true - the trees die and decay but new ones grow in their place, so that in one acre of forest there are quite a few tons of PAD that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. Deforestation is the original sin of man since the beginning of the agricultural revolution.
Switching/returning to agriculture and gardening forests, food forests, etc., combined with reducing consumption and unnecessary travel are the best and natural remedy for the environment
Haniel Koren, the method you propose is problematic. Areas, wilderness and manpower are the first, second and third problems. The fourth problem is that it does not eliminate PAD at all, it buries it for a short period in the organic material that, once dead, returns everything to the atmosphere. The advantage is the creation of oxygen which originates from the fifth problem - water.
The entrepreneur who knew how to evacuate the Fed, bubble it in sea water, grow algae there and harvest proteins from them - will be the next multi-billionaire
The best method to remove carbon dioxide from the air is by assimilating it into plants.
We need to sow and plant many more plants on earth.
There is lots and lots of free space that will not be used at all! No need for expensive investment
and the complexity of planting ready-made seedlings, as is customary today, but simply by sowing
seeds in the ground. After that, nature will take its course.
With this method, the earth can be forested very quickly and at extremely low costs.