Trees, plankton, soil, and other natural features and processes aren’t enough to fix the fact our atmosphere is overheating into a global problem, but nanotechnology can…
You casually walking into a giant cube. Every side of that cube is about two adult Killer Whales long, 42ft. A 42ft long cube has a volume of 74,088 ft cubed, and the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) the average car produces in a year (4 tons) fits perfectly in that box. Holy cow, all that is from a single car. We haven’t even talked about every car you see on the highway, the ice cream trucks, the school buses, the motorcycles, etc.
Humans contribute to a colossal amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Since 1751 the total global emissions of CO2 is over 1.5 trillion tonnes. We’re trying to limit average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius when the U.S. alone emits more than 5 billion tons of CO2 a year. Climate change is melting ice caps, shifting animal ranges, decreasing biodiversity, and contributing to other negative activities. We tried planting more trees, create plant-based food, use more renewable energy, and make other innovations, but this just isn’t enough to turn the problem around unless…
The Process of Carbon Capture
Scientists have initiated the beginning of closed-loop nanotech CO2 filtration systems (yeah this is a mouth full). Simply put, it’s a system that allows us to directly pull CO2 out of the air and convert it to valuable fuels or pellets we can store underground. There are four fundamental steps to the process: collect air, capture CO2, transform CO2 into fuel, and store or use.
Collect, Capture, Transform, and Store/Use
The first step is simple. Large air contractors pull in the air toward a honeycomb structure that absorbs 75% of the CO2. During this process, a liquid solution of chemicals constantly rains down perpendicular to the ground on the honeycomb structure. 80% of the CO2 then sticks to the liquid chemicals like if 80% of bugs flying through a beehive got stuck to honey. The CO2 is then sent to precipitate out solid calcium carbonate pellets after it is mixed with hydrogen.
These pellets can be stored underground so the result becomes carbon negative since we returned CO2 from the atmosphere to the ground, or they could be burned for fuel so the result becomes carbon neutral since we returned CO2 to the atmosphere. However, nanotechnology is driving the process even further.
Easy Capture and Potential Driving Force
Nanoscale sponges
Nanotechnology is the technology for industrial purposes based on the atomic, molecular, and supermolecular scales. In the carbon capture process, isolating CO2 and concentrating them to be processed is hard, so nanomaterial scientists from UC Berkley are creating a nanomembrane that has 90% selectability in what passes through it.
The nanomembrane is composed of selected material and Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), open networks with metal sites and atoms placed just so CO2 binds to it lightly and passes through its pathways. Not only does the selectivity of CO2 increase from normal membranes, but the GPU (gas permeance unit) also increases from around 450 to 1000! It’s like CO2 has a fast pass on the highway while everyone else is stuck in a traffic jam.
When these nanomembranes and nanomaterials are used to form sponges on the nanoscale, they can be used by carbon capture plants to capture carbon without a lot of the chemical processes involved. This would eliminate the 40% of energy carbon capture plants need to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
From CO2 to Nanofibers
In a laboratory test, scientists were reported to have put together a bath of molten salts and added some electrodes into the bath. An electrode current then passes through the salts, and through a chemical reaction, the process results in a black residue formed around the electrodes. This black residue is carbon nanofibers, nanostructures that have a cylindrical shape when cones, cups, and plate-shaped graphene layers are stacked on each other.
This fiber can be used to revolutionize and build products in the industry of fields such as filtration, sensors, drug delivery, nanocomposites, energy devices, and tissue engineering. If the process is scaled up to industrial processes since it can already create 10 grams of nanofibers per hour in a laboratory test. The system converts CO2 from the atmosphere into something we can use to build and advance other fields. Creating carbon nanofibers on a large scale then has the potential to initiate making a dent in CO2 increases contributing to global climate change!
Being a Part of the Solution
A single carbon capture plant does the work of 40 million trees. The equipment needed to build the plants is already available at scale in other industries so it is straightforward to scale carbon capture plants. Construction on the first commercial plant is already occurring in 2021, and carbon engineering estimates it can operate a few years after. Nanoscale sponges are being studied to optimize the effectiveness and reduce the cost of operating the carbon capture plants in the future. Once the conversion of CO2 to nanofibers is scaled up for other industrial purposes, governments and political regulatory laws may start to increase support in the field of carbon capture, and work together with the tech to make a difference in the global climate change issue.
TL;DR
- We’re trying to limit average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius when the U.S. alone emits more than 5 billion tons of CO2 a year.
- Closed-loop nanotech CO2 filtration systems are systems that allow us to directly pull CO2 out of the air and convert it to valuable fuels or pellets we can store underground. The 4 main steps to the process are: collect air, capture CO2, transform CO2 into fuel, and store or use.
- Nanotechnology is the technology for industrial purposes based on the atomic, molecular, and supermolecular scales.
- Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are open networks with metal sites and atoms placed just so CO2 binds to it lightly and passes through its pathways.
- Carbon nanofibers are nanostructures that have a cylindrical shape when cones, cups, and plate-shaped graphene layers are stacked on each other.
- A single carbon capture plant does the work of 40 million trees. Carbon capture plants are ready to be industrially scaled to address and draw political attention to the climate change issue.
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