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

Re:Esculation of promises

[jfengel]

Just wait. This is Slashdot, where there's at least a vague hope of somebody understanding a bit of science. By the time this hits the regular papers it will be "cuts".

purify things other than water

[OrangeTide]

I would like to see a plastic that can purify ethanol, instead of using the extremely inefficient method of boiling to distill the ethanol. All that boiling is one of the big reasons ethanol is impractical in the US. (we don't have the climate for sugarcane)

Then What?

[headhot]

What happens to the plastic membrane after it absorbs the CO2? Does it get recycled? thrown out? Burned?