New Material Can Selectively Capture CO2

Socguy brings us a story from CBC News about a recently developed crystal that can soak up carbon dioxide gas "like a sponge." Chemists from UCLA believe that the crystals will become a cheap, stable method to absorb emissions at power plants. We discussed a prototype for another CO2 extraction device last year. Quoting: "'The technical challenge of selectively removing carbon dioxide has been overcome,' said UCLA chemistry professor Omar Yaghi in a statement. The porous structures can be heated to high temperatures without decomposing and can be boiled in water or solvents for a week and remain stable, making them suitable for use in hot, energy-producing environments like power plants. The highly porous crystals also had what the researchers called 'extraordinary capacity for storing CO2': one litre of the crystals could store about 83 litres of CO2."

Comments

Like corn cobs?

[F34nor]

I wonder if this is similar to the charcoal briquetting technique shown about a year ago with corn cobs and natural gas. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=108390/

And how does it affect the environment?

[bigattichouse]

So, you spill a few liters of the stuff - what does it do when it gets in contact with living creatures (like algae? birds? small children?) And how long does it take to break down and release all those gases? (That would be useful - like a CO2 tank for plants for long space voyages)... I think there are a lot of questions.

full?

[theheadlessrabbit]

and what happens when these crystals are full?

Raises two questions

[Opportunist]

First, how much CO2 is produced in making those crystals and second, what shall we do with them once they're full? Dump them in some old salt min... no, wait, there's already that radioactive waste.

how much ENERGY does it take to make a crystal?

[victorvodka]

I hate to be the grumpy old man throwing the wet blanket of thermodynamic skepticism on this fancy new idea, but since these are new crystals, I have to imagine they are not present in nature, and thus take lots of energy to make. Thus, to soak up a lot of CO2 takes a lot of energy - but using lots of energy is why we have CO2 to begin with. All the CO2 sequestration ideas I've read about so far don't make any sense from a macro-ecological perspective, since their use actually drives up energy usage, precisely the opposite of the response we should be making to the problem. "Oh, but we can make the crystals with clean nuclear power!" Really? If that's case, you can just not make the crystals and use that clean power instead! It doesn't take much of a puzzle for even smart people to fall for plans which, at their root, are just perpetual motion machines.

Re:how much ENERGY does it take to make a crystal?

[triskaidekaphile]

Unless those crystals are going at light speed or they are made from antimatter, we should not be confusing the energy creation cost with the crystals' chemical absorption ability. (It doesn't cost much water to make my sponge, but it sure as heck absorbs a lot of H2O!) Now if someone claims the full crystal could later be taken and converted into fuel that somehow released more energy than the cost of creating the crystal and the CO2 in the first place, then we would indeed be violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Re:Solution without a Problem

[ductonius]

Spaceflight and oceanographic research. With cheaper rebreathers underwater research will become more affordable. It seems this chemical will absorb more CO2 than regular CO2 scubbers too, and having a scrubber media that isn't reactive to water would be a huge safety factor.

Re:I already have a CO2 storage device

[abigor]

And btw, whenever someone tells me that woodburning is good for the environment, I always have to ask, *whose* environment? Not the environment of the people who have to breathe the surrounding air! Yeah, good point actually. People are really focused on the greenhouse gas thing and ignore the effects of particulates. If you've ever been to a place that has a lot of wood stoves and not much wind, then you'll know all about bad air quality thanks to wood burning.

Re:Solution without a Problem

[Waffle Iron]

Well, the first article is actually a myth busting entry debunking the theory that the lag associated with the past couple of ice ages somehow proves that CO2 does not cause warming.

The second website looks to me like a highly biased collection of cargo cult science put together by people who specialize in fields like economics, not climatology.

Re:I already have a CO2 storage device

[thrillseeker]

So, you think the Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains have all that haze from the massive car pollution there, vice the ozone-producing isoprene that plants, trees in particular, emit, with plant hydrocarbon emission being at a rate ten times that of all the world's cars?

I suppose listening only to that great bastion of unbiased scientific study, the 4:1 liberal:conservative press, is one option...

Re:I already have a CO2 storage device

[Black-Man]

You'd be shocked on how little smoke is emitted w/ the new wood stoves. I have a Quadra Fire - and when you dampen it down (which is basically how one uses it the majority of the time) there is literally no smoke coming out the chimney. Versus a neighbor w/ a normal fireplace where the smoke plumes can be smelled a mile away. Technology is a good thing.

Re:I already have a CO2 storage device

[itsdapead]

Uhmmm, *producing* and *transporting* biofuel emits CO2, so it's not really viable as a non-CO2 emitting technology.

Only if you use coal and oil as the power source for producing and transporting it!

Honestly, this one gets trotted out so often that you'd think there was some sort of thermodynamic paradox behind using a biofuel-powered tractor (or solar-powered or hydrogen-powered - or even a fricking horse provided it was fitted with a fart afterburner to kill the methane) to harvest your biofuel.

The problem is the half-baked rush to promote a uniquely expensive and inefficent biofuel (corn alcohol) without first building the infrastructure or ensuring sustainable supplies.