New Carbon Dioxide Scrubbing Material

Much more efficient and usable under real world conditions as well as reusable. Nice. [Link]

If cleaning carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was easy, we’d already be doing it. But carbon capture has proven to be a tough technology to feasibly roll out on a grand scale, and that means all the things we do that produce carbon dioxide emissions--which seems to be just about everything these days--are still roughly as bad for the planet as they were several years ago. That’s a problem in a warming world, and one that a team of researchers may have just found a solution for via an inexpensive polymeric material.

Reporting their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the team (which includes a Nobel laureate in chemistry) descirbes a new solid material based on polyethylenimine that can be used to capture carbon dioxide at the source--be that an industrial smokestack or a car’s exhaust pipe--under real-world conditions where the air contains moisture.