Green Machine: Sucking carbon dioxide out of the air

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/02/green-machine-sucking-co2-out.html

Green Machine: Sucking carbon dioxide out of the air

11:51 25 February 2011

Helen Knight, technology reporter

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Air capture, in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, has been touted as a potentially promising way to tackle climate change. That's because unlike carbon capture from power plant flue gases, the technology has the potential to reduce existing CO2 levels, rather than simply slowing the rate of increase.

To demonstrate that the technology works, http://www.chemistry.gatech.edu/faculty/Jones/">Christopher Jones at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta tested a CO2 absorbent based on amines - the chemicals predominantly used in power plant carbon capture trials - on gases with CO2 concentrations similar to those found in ambient air.

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However, unlike the liquid amines typically used in power plant carbon capture, which consume large amounts of energy as they must be heated to very high temperatures to http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/02/green-machine-crystals-and-enz.html">re-release their stored CO2, Jones' team has developed a new class of the material called hyperbranched aminosilica, in which the amine is held on a solid porous silica substrate.

Solid amines release the stored CO2 when heated to just 110 degrees Celsius - much lower than the temperatures required by the water-based liquid amine solutions - reducing the amount of energy required by 75 per cent.

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