CCS at 'half the cost'
12 Mar 2015
A material which captures carbon at half the energy cost has been developed by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB).
Chemists at the university said the material - a metal-organic framework (MOF) modified with nitrogen compounds called diamines - can efficiently remove carbon from the ambient air of a submarine as readily as from the polluted emissions of a coal-fired power plant.
According to the chemists, the MOF material releases the carbon dioxide at lower temperatures than current carbon-capture materials - potentially cutting by half the energy currently consumed in the process.
From there, released carbon dioxide (CO2) can be stored underground or, in the case of a submarine, expelled into the sea.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which is traditionally used to capture the CO2 that escapes through the burning of coal and gas for power generation, is designed to limit the amount of harmful gas entering the atmosphere.
In order to battle climate change, experts suggest much more needs to be done to implement CCS, particularly within the heavy industries.
However, the cost of CCS can often hamper its implementation.
“Carbon dioxide is 15% of the gas coming off a power plant, so a carbon-capture unit is going to be big,” said senior author Jeffrey Long, a UCB professor of chemistry.
“With these new materials, that unit could be much smaller, making the capital costs drop tremendously as well as the operating costs,” Long said.
Long’s technique is designed to bind CO2 at temperatures far below than is currently posssible, which could dramatically lower the costs associated with traditonal CCS.
Last year, the MOF material was picked up by start-up firm Mosaic Materials who now have plans to develop a pilot study of CO2 separation from power plant emissions.
A full account of the study has been published in the journal Nature.
