WICHITA, Kansas — Large industrial operations — think electrical power plants, oil refineries, ethanol facilities —cough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by the ton. That, in turn, warms the planet.
But now some researchers think Kansas could be a good place to pump the gas underground rather than up in the air.
Scientists have developed membranes that separate carbon dioxide from nitrogen. The membranes feature porous graphene decorated with polymers and use interactions between the polymers and carbon dioxide to create a system that can selectively filter carbon dioxide out of flue gas.
Carbon capture and storage remains one of the most promising strategies to limit the impact of carbon emissions. Some industrial plants already capture carbon dioxide using amine sorbents, where heating regenerates the amines and removes the carbon dioxide – but this process is energy intensive.
Despite the emergence of renewable energy sources such as large-scale wind and solar power, our planet is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
In the U.S., for example, the Energy Information Administration states that petroleum, natural gas and coal accounted for roughly 77.6 percent of primary energy production in 2017.
It's within this context that, in some quarters, the idea of carbon capture and storage, or CCS, has gained traction.
PALISADES, NEW YORK — Peter Kelemen spends time in Oman looking for ways to pull carbon out of the air and put it back underground. His colleague, David Goldberg, looks at ways to store it far below the sea floor off the Oregon coast. Chemical engineer Alissa Park is working with steel mills in China to turn slag and waste carbon dioxide into reusable material.
If we're going to reach the goal of keeping Earth from warming more than 1.5° C (2.7° F) this century, it's not enough to just reduce our carbon dioxide emissions – we need to actively clean it out of the atmosphere too. Inspired by the ocean's role as a natural carbon sink, researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Georgia Tech have developed a new system that absorbs CO2 and produces electricity and useable hydrogen fuel.
Representatives from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Poland for talks on climate change - aimed at breathing new life into the Paris Agreement.
The UN has warned the 2015 Paris accord's goal of limiting global warming to "well below 2C above pre-industrial levels" is in danger because major economies, including the US and the EU, are falling short of their pledges.
October 1, 2018
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