MAR 13

Removing CO2 from flue gas (that toxic mixture of air, CO2, sulfur, mercury and more) is an important step in figuring out how to prevent the CO2 from helping to cause global warming. But current technology has a hard time doing it. Traditionally, bubbling it through water with amines has been used to pick up CO2. But then releasing the CO2 from the solution requires tons of heat, and it's expensive to heat up water.

Which is why researchers have been working on developing a solid substrate for the amines. Something that could capture CO2 at low temperatures and then release the CO2 at slightly higher temperatures. But until Chris Jones and his team at the Georgia Institute of Technology hit the scene, there had been little success.

Chris has developed a solid material that is extremely inexpensive to produce, holds onto CO2 with iron-fisted amines and gently lets go when heated. Chris says these hyperbranched aminosilica compounds could easily be synthesized on an industrial scale.

Of course, this is only the first step in pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. A system has to be developed to get the flue gas to interact with the compound at relatively low temperatures inexpensively. And then the aminosilica has to transport and release its CO2 somewhere where it won't do any damage (say...a big biofuel producing algae farm...for example.)

Via Environmental Research Web

Comments (2)

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CEO
written by Spencer Ashby, March 13, 2008

This is not a comment it's more or less a statement. Dr. John Zhu from the University of Queensland is developing a carbon nanotube (CNT) membrane. From what I have read this could be the most cost effective way to filter carbon or co2. If Dr. John Zhu can figure out how to harness or contain co2 there is a potential product for every home owner in the world. It could be a device that would sit on a roof sucking and storing co2 24/7. The problem today is that there is to much co2 being produced. We need to stop diverting the co2 and just contain it by freezing it. If we can figure out a way to freeze the co2 that is collected from the device on everyone's roof. It can be released at a rate were our planet can naturally disposed of it. :-

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why capture ?
written by litteuldav, March 16, 2008

Is there anyone who thinks that burning coal (or anything else) and then using lots of energy to cool down fumes, separate toxics, then CO2 on a substrat, then heating the substrat to get the CO2 back is anything like efficient ?

Won't all these operations cost merely 60-80% the energy from burning coal in the first place ?

Are these researchs subdidized by Big Coal or Big Oil ?

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