New Plastic to Cut CO2 Emissions and Purify Water

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers have lots of imagination. After developing plastic as solid as steel, other scientists from in Australia, Korea and in the U.S. have created a plastic which could cut CO2 emissions and purify water. Their new material mimics pores found in plants and is exceptionally efficient. As said one of the lead researchers, 'it can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas a few hundred times faster than current plastic membranes and its performance is four times better in terms of purity of the separated gas.' Now it remains to be seen if commercial companies are interested, either for water desalination or for natural gas processing plants."

Comments

Essentially a plastic version of a plant membrane

[bomanbot]

Well I read TFA and the concept behind that plastic is deceptively simple: It is a membrane consisting of hourglass-shaped pores, which seemingly is a very efficient shape for pores and is also used in plant cell membranes.

So in essence, this plastic is a plant membrane in plastic form, which is not a radically advanced concept, but a really clever one and if it works as advertised, kudos to the research teams.

Re:Then What?

[The Master Control P]

The membrane doesn't absorb anything. Once you finish snickering at the graphic that depicts individual molecules passing through smoothly-machined pores, you can see it's just a molecular-size seive; The linear CO2 molecules can present a small enough cross-section to go through if they line up axially; Tetrahedral methane and larger organic chains can't, so it efficiently sorts fluids based on molecule size.

It looks a lot like a nanopatterned plastic zeolite actually.

That's nice and all, but...

[r_jensen11]

It doesn't change the fact that we use plastics more often than we should. Melting plastic requires significantly more energy than melting glass. Recycling plastic also requires significantly more energy than recycling glass. Additionally, plastic can only be recycled a few times. Glass, on the other hand, has a much longer life.

How about we bring back the glass bottles? We're already losing the glass beer bottles to plastic ones. I say we reverse the tide, and go back to glass Coke bottles. And wouldn't it be nice if those milk jugs were actually re-used?

I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't find better plastics. All I'm saying is that I think, in addition to researching new plastics, we take time to look at the alternatives to plastics. Sometimes the old-fashioned methods work just as well, if not better, than new methods. You havn't seen a more efficient wheel invented in the last few thousand years, have you?

Re:That's nice and all, but...

[Silentknyght]

Plastic can be recycled many, many times; more than just "a few." The phenomenon to which you are referring is due to dyes. Clear plastics are highly desirable for recycling, because they can be reused for many different applications and/or products. When you recycle dyed plastics, you limit your options--you can't make the plastic clear again--so you just add more dyes and, making the plastic opaque and darker, limit the desirability. Eventually, the recycled plastic does become filler for concrete bumpers or liner for jackets, in some end-of-life (i.e. no more recycling) stage.

The problem with switching to glass is the weight and size. Plastic is more durable & flexible at a much lighter mass. Glass means extra weight and usually less product per unit area, both of which add up to extra shipping costs (i.e. more gasoline burned).

Editorial Sensationalism

[Sentri]

Now now, the CSIRO are actually a respectable scientific body that research and develop countless products, dont believe me? Have a look at 802.11n (for example)

From the Article:
"This plastic will help solve problems of small molecule separation, whether related to clean coal technology, separating greenhouse gases, increasing the energy efficiency of water purification, or producing and delivering energy from hydrogen," Dr Anita Hill of CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering said.
"The ability of the new plastic to separate small molecules surpasses the limits of any conventional plastics."
"It can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas a few hundred times faster than current plastic membranes and its performance is four times better in terms of purity of the separated gas."

All wishy washyness about the abilities of the substance is the editorialising of slashdot and the writer of the article

(802.11n link with a fairly complete look at the picture: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-dark-australian-patent-cloud-looms-over-802-11n-spec.html though it does kind of skirt around the fact that the CSIRO were ripped off in the past by the worldwide adoption clause and they are attempting to avoid the same again )

Wait... what??

[Khyber]

"Melting plastic requires significantly more energy than melting glass."

I hold in my hands a plastic bottle and a glass bottle, both used to have beer in them.

I take my butane lighter, spark it, and hold the flame to the bottom of the plastic. Within seconds, it's melting and burning. I do that to the glass bottle, and I'll burn thru that whole lighter's fuel supply (which is energy) before I even turn the glass red.

I'll say it probably takes more energy to melt glass rather than plastic.

Re:'Nah', say industry groups.

[deek]

Why would that cause problems, other than extremely locally ? You're not changing the total amount of salt in the sea, nor the total amount of water in the sea, so the end-result should be pretty close to zero.

Well, you _are_ changing the total amount of water in the sea, otherwise what is the use of desalination? But that is a nit-pick, because you are correct, if you consider the _entire_ sea, the net effect will be close to zero.

But I'm not talking about net effect. Concentrated brine will kill life on the seabed, and it will kill it for many kilometres around the pipes, depending on the topography, of course. It sounds like you don't understand how concentrated brine acts in seawater. If you think it'll naturally disperse quickly, you've got a big surprise waiting. If unagitated, brine will sink to the bottom of the sea, and will hang around for a long, long time. You'll actually have a lake of brine form, and it is visibly different to the normal seawater above it. All this can quite quickly disrupt or kill off the ecosystem in a much larger area than the brine itself takes up.

The net salt content of the whole sea will be close to the same as before, but now you've destroyed any life in the area. Now you know the dangers of thinking in terms of "net effect".