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Researchers Create Renewable Carbon Dioxide Sponge

First time accepted submitter Babu V Bassa writes "Concerned about adding too much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere? Consider a roof top coating on your car with this new material. A multinational team of researchers have developed a renewable sponge like material to capture and store gaseous carbon dioxide. The organic material is made up of gamma-cyclodextrin. Conventional metal-organic frameworks, which also are effective at adsorbing carbon dioxide, are usually prepared from materials derived from crude oil and often incorporate toxic heavy metals and are also non-renewable. The research paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society claims that its synthesis is essentially carbon-neutral and have the demonstrated ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere makes them promising materials for carbon fixation."

37 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Redundent.. by houstonbofh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wood already works for "carbon fixation" and you can make things with it that people will actually keep. My mother has some "fixated carbon" in the living room over 100 years old. Just grow a tree and make a desk.

    1. Re:Redundent.. by AzariahK · · Score: 2

      Wood already works for "carbon fixation" and you can make things with it that people will actually keep. My mother has some "fixated carbon" in the living room over 100 years old. Just grow a tree and make a desk.

      Why use a simple, cheap solution when you can pay so much more for a complicated and less-effective one? The eco-industrial complex can't charge you as much for just growing a tree.

    2. Re:Redundent.. by NewWorldDan · · Score: 3, Informative

      To be fair, though, unless stored properly in a dry environment, wood will decay and release the carbon. If you want to store it forever, you need to bake it down into charcoal. Then you can bury it in the ground. Where it can later be dug up to fuel a power plant.

      In any event, I don't know who is supporting research for this retarded carbon dioxide sponge, but it needs to stop. There are so many more important things that could be done with that time and money. Feeding the poor, curing diseases, providing me with high end hookers and a pile of coke the size of Rhode Island. You get the idea.

    3. Re:Redundent.. by MikeUW · · Score: 3, Informative

      I recall seeing a documentary that included a study of this. IIRC, there was a measurable increase in plant production, but not an increase in nutrients. So, it's not going to help (and may instead degrade) the quality of your vegetables, although perhaps trees/bamboo used for construction material will improve (but maybe other qualitative aspects would be reduced, such as strength of the material). However, I think the increased level of CO2 required to measure this was beyond anything we're likely to see...but it was a long time ago, so I don't remember the details or who did the study.

    4. Re:Redundent.. by blueg3 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wood already works for "carbon fixation" and you can make things with it that people will actually keep. My mother has some "fixated carbon" in the living room over 100 years old. Just grow a tree and make a desk.

      Apparently the IPCC agrees with you, even. However, relying on wood as a sole means of carbon sequestration requires planting far more trees than we can reasonably dedicate land to.

      Planting trees to counteract CO2 emissions is cheap and effective, but it's not enough. We already know how to do it, so you're probably not going to see any news about new advances in tree-planting technology on Slashdot.

    5. Re:Redundent.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Absorption-limited nutrient supply from the soil / more vegetable mass produced = less nutrients per pound. Do you have to be so rude?

    6. Re:Redundent.. by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, his point is fairly sound if you assume the primary growth constraint on plants is the availability of CO2 (although the composition of most fertilizers proves it isn't.)

      The assumption is that, when more carbon dioxide is readily available, plants will grow more. However, since the availability of other nutrients (especially exotic minerals and ions) isn't increasing, there will be less of these nutrients to spread amongst the increased number of plants. Hence, vegetables and other crops that are less able to pass on these nutrients to the people eating them.

      Of course, this is all irrelevant, because plants have a huge excess of CO2 in the present atmosphere and are generally prevented from growing due to the lack of free nitrogen and phosphorus. Incidentally, I believe more than a few people have suggested (and perhaps even implemented) dumping fertilizer into the oceans to make the resultant algal blooms suck up more CO2. This is a double-edged sword, in that the blooms block out sunlight for plants growing on the ocean floor, but also eventually die off and provide a substantial food boon to the animals near the surface.

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    7. Re:Redundent.. by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Great, the "eco-industrial complex" and "Big Green."

      We thought the AGW Denialism Batshit Generator Engine was running at max power, but it was just warming up...

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    8. Re:Redundent.. by zippthorne · · Score: 2

      Yeah, it's not so much "big green" as it is, GE, which owns NBC Universal, you know....

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    9. Re:Redundent.. by nomadic · · Score: 2

      Worse than blocking out sunlight is the fact that blooms lead to less oxygen as phytoplankton dies and is decomposed by bacteria, removing oxygen from the water column. There are a lot of anoxic coastal waters specifically because we've been dumping too much nitrogen into the ocean, we definitely don't need any more.

    10. Re:Redundent.. by thePuck77 · · Score: 2

      While I am a supporter of eco-preservation and green tech, I have to agree that there is an entire industry sector out there who is eager as hell to turn saving the ecosystem into a goose laying golden eggs. While I know, of course, that planting trees, while technically a solution, isn't really a solution because people aren't going to give up urban environments any time soon (which is exactly where we need the most carbon fixing), the point is valid...there started being an eco-industrial complex the moment people with money started being willing to spend it on the issue.

      There is also an edu-industrial complex who wants to own learning, an entertainment-industrial complex that already owns entertainment, etc, etc.

      It's not just weapons dealers, bankers, the MPAA/RIAA, and Microsoft that want to own a sector of the economy. The minute it stopped just being fringe hippies that gave a shit about the environment, slime-buckets came oozing out of MBA programs all over the country to exploit it.

      --
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    11. Re:Redundent.. by budgenator · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What you want to do to sequester CO2 is to make Terra Perta by using the wood as a carbon source for low temperature pyrolysis called Biochar.

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    12. Re:Redundent.. by GumphMaster · · Score: 2

      Even in the perverse world of the USPTO you could not get away with patenting the tree (yet). Therefore, trees simply cannot be the solution ;)

      --
      Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
    13. Re:Redundent.. by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2

      So what? Solyndra was a big energy industrial corp. Every single energy industry in America has always been driven ahead by government money. And now with strategic competitors like China, a Communist country where all new industrial development is totally government planned and subsidized, keeping and making America even relevant, if not #1, requires US government investment. Because the greedy, lazy, stupid American corporations don't invest in that kind of stuff.

      The oil biz is still getting $4 BILLION in corporate welfare these years, even during record profits. You don't whine about that. You just whine about whatever Rush Limbo or your alternate favorite rightwing propaganda tells you to bunch your panties over.

      Get the oil corps to stop robbing my taxes and I'll care that a risktaking company failed to return its loan valued at a small percentage of the oil welfare. You never will, so I'll never care.

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      --
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    14. Re:Redundent.. by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      How about this. There is no fucking way they are making me pay for the air I breath, you have a to draw a line somewhere and the line is drawn right fucking there.

      I am not paying to clean up pollution so that corporations can continue to pollute beyond all reason. I am not paying so that corporations can inflate their profit margins by dumping pollution rather than properly containing on pollutants on site. What ever methods they use recycling, fixation or simply rely on clean production, it should be the corporations cost and when they fail corporate executives should have their assets 'sequestered' and be trotted off to prison en-masse.

      I am not paying for the fucking air I breath and will actively and forcefully resist any attempt force it upon me.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    15. Re:Redundent.. by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Bamboo is better. If you could plant the entire globe (including water, so you can't, but bear with me) with bamboo you'd fix all the excess carbon out of the atmosphere in one growth cycle. You can't do that, but we do have absolute shitloads of land that could sustain bamboo, which can be used for all of the same stuff we use wood for now. Sure, a lot of designs look really different when built with bamboo as compared to wood, but since you can literally use it as the core structure for skyscrapers I think we have conclusively proven that it can build big stuff. The big advantage is that it grows really fast, so you can do it all over again. And another big advantage is that you could literally just feed it with barely-processed sewage. And ANOTHER big advantage is that you could do a lot of it on desert land. I differ with most ecologists, who would like to preserve desert biomes, in that I see it as a cancer. Remember, Africa used to be green. If it were up to me we'd be trying to reclaim all desert land in the world, with schemes like this and algae-for-biodiesel.

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  2. Carbon Fixation by Hanzie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A way to fix carbon permanently is to bury it underground in a specially capped storage facility. Just so long as it doesn't decay, and just acts like a rock under the dirt, we're doing good.

    I call the above 'burying paper in a landfill'. Al Gore has an old newspaper he keeps on his desk that was perfectly preserved in a landfill.

    So we take trees, that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, turn them into paper to sell and finance the operation. Collect the paper and "carbon sequester" it underground in a capped storage facility (landfill). We're saving the planet!

    Given the above, the worst thing you can do is recycle paper.
    The more recycled, the less new produced.
    The less new paper produced, the fewer Douglas Fir trees planted in the managed forests.
    The fewer new trees planted, the less CO2 pulled from the atmosphere.

    Someone with more environmental awareness please show me where the logic is flawed. I'm unable to find it, and I've looked.

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    1. Re:Carbon Fixation by Greyfox · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ooh better yet, require companies to keep huge amounts of paper records indefinitely! Then you don't even have to pay for the landfill! I smell a revamp to the tax code coming!

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    2. Re:Carbon Fixation by a_n_d_e_r_s · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The energy needed to make paper from trees are larger then the energy needed by reusing old paper so that process will create alot more CO2.

      The owner of the land will plant new trees independently if paper are recycled or not. There are other uses of trees then for paper and the need for paper is increasing in this computerised world since many 'cant read' from the screen and insist of printing it into paper.

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      Just saying it like it are.
    3. Re:Carbon Fixation by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      Ooh better yet, require companies to keep huge amounts of paper records indefinitely! Then you don't even have to pay for the landfill! I smell a revamp to the tax code coming!

      OK. This actually explains a lot... Or at least it makes more sense than most government initiatives.

    4. Re:Carbon Fixation by ceoyoyo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Nobody reuses paper. They recycle it. And that's a whole other ballgame. Wikipedia says recycling paper actually uses MORE fossil fuels than producing new pulp because new pulp mills get energy mostly from burning wood scraps while recycling plants usually use electricity, which tends to be produced from fossil fuels, particularly in the urban areas where you want your recycling plant.

      No, if you don't use paper less trees get planted. Paper is a major consumer of forestry products and most of it in the first world comes from managed forests - they're harvested then replanted, just like farms. If they're not harvested, they don't get replanted.

    5. Re:Carbon Fixation by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Simple. It costs more energy to recycle paper than it does to grow new trees for the use in wood and paper products. To recycle you need to, bleach, skim, decontaminate, treat, mash, mix, repulp, then make new. Plus using waste paper as mulching and mixed with other biomaterials works wonders. I mean those of us who live in the north have been doing this for nearly a 100 years, more so when there isn't any damn topsoil.

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  3. Do the math... by bunratty · · Score: 2

    Sounds good to me. All we have to do is get everyone on the planet to plant several tons of trees every year (30 billion tons CO2 emissions per year / 7 billion people). Should be easy!

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    1. Re:Do the math... by icebike · · Score: 2

      It is easy.

      You just stay home, and the trees will take care of planting themselves.

      Print this out and tape it to your wall. It will sequester the carbon, and remind you that earth will take care of itself.

      --
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    2. Re:Do the math... by bunratty · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, eventually the trees will sequester the carbon, but they cannot sequester it fast enough to prevent the concentration of carbon dioxide form rising steeply due to humans burning fossil fuels. That's why the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen steadily since the industrial revolution. Again, check your math. Yes, it's harder than sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALA! I can't hear you!"

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  4. Re:What? A rooftop coating? I don't get it. by icebike · · Score: 2

    Better to make the car (or large portions of it) from wood.

    Morgan has been using wood frames forever.
    http://www.morgan-motor.co.uk/carpages/44/44.html

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  5. good start. what about methane? by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 2

    its 20 times worse than c02in regards to global warming.

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    1. Re:good start. what about methane? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Informative

      its 20 times worse than c02in regards to global warming.

      But there's more than 200x as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is methane.

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    2. Re:good start. what about methane? by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      its 20 times worse than c02in regards to global warming.

      But there's more than 200x as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is methane.

      Unless I have eggs for breakfast...

  6. Re:noko by guybrush3pwood · · Score: 2

    Sometimes, people need to get banged in the head with the obvious.

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  7. Carbon Neutral* excluding waste streams by esten · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I always love how processes that claim to be carbon neutral exclude the largest sources of waste such as reagents and solvents used in processing which are in excess to 1000x the product achieved.

    And yes while some of these can be recovered somewhat on an industrial scale their recovery is highly energy intensive process.

  8. Re:What? A rooftop coating? I don't get it. by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

    Except wood is one of the last materials you'd want to use in a car (well, in many things, but especially a car). It's heavy, weak, and highly susceptible to environmental degradation.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  9. Re:China + India + Coal by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Chinese are building more nuclear plants these days and electric scooters are very popular there. I wouldn't be surprised to see them become more environmentally friendly than the US in the next 15-30 years.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  10. Re:China + India + Coal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    However, I do have a problem with these same liberals attempt to use the power of the state to force their bullshit green attitudes on the rest of us.

    And I have a problem with fundamentalists and the far right attempting to use the power of the state to force their bullshit anti-science and war mongering agendas on the rest of us. I don't want Creationism anti-science taught in schools that are funded by my taxes. I don't want my taxes used to kill people, in far away places and here. (Honestly, I'd think that if the fundies were to answer the question that's hanging on the walls of most of their churches, i.e. WWJD?, we wouldn't be trying so hard to kill anyone. But hey, you know, that whole common sense thing is vastly over-rated.)

    Yeah, mod me down. See if I care. Haters gonna hate.

  11. Co2 sticks around, methane doesn't by clonan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because methane is a pretty reactive molecule. So it reacts spontaneously. In the atmosphere Methane has a half life of about 8 years.

    We don't worry much about methane for the same reason we don't worry about H2O. Water vapor causes roughly 60% of all greenhouse effects yet since a water molecule on is in the atmosphere for about 9 days there is not much to worry about.

    Co2 has a half life of centuries. So while boiling water on the stove stays in the atmosphere for a few days and cow farts stay in the air for a decade, CO2 stays up there for centuries.

  12. Re:China + India + Coal by makubesu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    America - Why be green? The Chinese will still destroy the environment.
    China - Why be green? The Americans will still destroy the environment.

  13. Re:China + India + Coal by Trogre · · Score: 2

    Only if their manufacturing industry collapses. Remember that the reason you're sending all your money over there in exchange for cheap goods is twofold:

    1. Labour is cheaper since unions are effectively banned
    2. Environmental laws are effectively non-existent (as in, they exist but are ignored)

    If their manufacturing plants start adhering to sane environmental regulations there will be higher overheads which will translate to less incentive to send manufacturing over there.

    That is, if there is any manufacturing skill left in the west by then...

    --
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