This gives whole new meaning to the term “spongeworthy”.
From Northwestern University News: EVANSTON, Ill. — A year ago Northwestern University chemists published their recipe for a new class of nanostructures made of sugar, salt and alcohol. Now, the same team has discovered the edible compounds can efficiently detect, capture and store carbon dioxide. And the compounds themselves are carbon-neutral.
The porous crystals — known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — are made from all-natural ingredients and are simple to prepare, giving them a huge advantage over other MOFs. Conventional MOFs, which also are effective at adsorbing carbon dioxide, are usually prepared from materials derived from crude oil and often incorporate toxic heavy metals.
Other features of the Northwestern MOFs are they turn red when completely full of carbon dioxide, and the carbon capture process is reversible.
The findings, made by scientists working in the laboratory of Sir Fraser Stoddart, Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).
“We are able to take molecules that are themselves sourced from atmospheric carbon, through photosynthesis, and use them to capture even more carbon dioxide,” said Ross S. Forgan, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart’s laboratory. “By preparing our MOFs from naturally derived ingredients, we are not only making materials that are entirely nontoxic, but we are also cutting down on the carbon dioxide emissions associated with their manufacture.”
The main component, gamma-cyclodextrin, is a naturally occurring biorenewable sugar molecule that is derived from cornstarch.
The sugar molecules are held in place by metals taken from salts such as potassium benzoate or rubidium hydroxide, and it is the precise arrangement of the sugars in the crystals that is vital to their successful capture of carbon dioxide.
“It turns out that a fairly unexpected event occurs when you put that many sugars next to each other in an alkaline environment — they start reacting with carbon dioxide in a process akin to carbon fixation, which is how sugars are made in the first place,” said Jeremiah J. Gassensmith, lead author of the paper and also a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart’s laboratory. “The reaction leads to the carbon dioxide being tightly bound inside the crystals, but we can still recover it at a later date very simply.”
The fact that the carbon dioxide reacts with the MOF, an unusual occurrence, led to a simple method of detecting when the crystals have reached full capacity. The researchers place an indicator molecule, which detects changes in pH by changing its color, inside each crystal. When the yellow crystals of the MOFs are full of carbon dioxide they turn red.
The simplicity of the new MOFs, allied with their low cost and green credentials, have marked them as candidates for further commercialization. Ronald A. Smaldone, also a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart’s group and a co-author of the paper, added, “I think this is a remarkable demonstration of how simple chemistry can be successfully applied to relevant problems like carbon capture and sensor technology.”
The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the U.K., the King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Korea supported the research.
The title of the paper is “Strong and Reversible Binding of Carbon Dioxide in a Green Metal–Organic Framework.” In addition to Stoddart, Gassensmith, Smaldone and Forgan, the other authors of the paper are Hiroyasu Furukawa and Omar M. Yaghi, from UCLA.
Abstract:
The efficient capture and storage of gaseous CO2 is a pressing environmental problem. Although porous metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have been shown to be very effective at adsorbing CO2 selectively by dint of dipole–quadruple interactions and/or ligation to open metal sites, the gas is not usually trapped covalently. Furthermore, the vast majority of these MOFs are fabricated from nonrenewable materials, often in the presence of harmful solvents, most of which are derived from petrochemical sources. Herein we report the highly selective adsorption of CO2 by CD-MOF-2, a recently described green MOF consisting of the renewable cyclic oligosaccharide γ-cyclodextrin and RbOH, by what is believed to be reversible carbon fixation involving carbonate formation and decomposition at room temperature. The process was monitored by solid-state 13C NMR spectroscopy as well as colorimetrically after a pH indicator was incorporated into CD-MOF-2 to signal the formation of carbonic acid functions within the nanoporous extended framework.
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What would they be used for?
The efficient capture and storage of gaseous CO2 is a pressing environmental problem.
Only if you need grant money.
Ah yes, Anthony, I thought you might like that one when I posted an article about it to Tips & Notes a couple of days ago! (September 24, 2011 at 2:21 am) Somehow red MOFs just don’t sound all that appetizing to me. :0)
Sugar, salt, and alcohol? Can’t we just keep sequestering the carbon dioxide in beer and wine, and skip the salt?
CO2 storage (as it is propagandized by the enviro’s and politicians) is a waste of time, money, effort, materials, land, energy and manpower. It is not needed, and decreases power plant (any process!) efficiency … and produces nothing of value. It increases waste, reduces net gain, and – to repeat – gives back nothing of value.
Except grant money for other government programs from government programs.
(Now, this might be helpful in hydrogen storage, acetylene storage, etc for vehicles instead of high pressure gas bottles.)
My apathy knows no bounds.
Sounds like an excellent idea for the Space program to be used as a CO2 scrubber. Then take the concentrated CO2 and bubble it through an algae laden solution and wallah! O2 for the people. Depending on the weight to uptake ratio (efficacy), it also might have an application for SCUBA diving or underwater habitats. Other potentials would be mine shafts and other closed spaces requiring ventilation for human occupancy. If there are suitable (commercial) uses for the algae solution, the HVAC system of an office building could become a source of potential for cash flow instead of a cost center.
Talking about the sponge, take a look at Spongebob’s global warming piece:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkprv-Upco&w=384&h=246]
Hm, not sure I’d call it actually “edible” if it contains rubidium hydroxide along with the tastier bits, but still an unexpected and interesting process. A pity they feel impelled to “justify” their research by starting the abstract with a completely false statement, but I suppose that’s obligatory in the politically-corrupted corridors of modern science.
Why?………. CO2 is not pollution.
Re: It’s Only Words
> What would they be used for?
One possibility is in enclosed spaces (submarines, spacecraft etc) where the air has to be scrubbed of CO2 to make the atmosphere breathable. It all depends upon how much CO2 they can store and how much effort it is to release it.
Since this planet is short of atmospheric CO2 why would you want to store CO2?
To satisfy some stupid political eco desire.
I can see a money-spinning idea here.
CO2 detector arm patches!
A simple MOF-Patch with a velcro backing, stuck on the sleeve, could alert the user to dangerous levels of poisonous C02 pollution by changing colour. In life threatening (MOF-CON 3) situations, the user could take some Oxy-Mofs from his back pack, or strap on a MOF-mask in order to escape back to ‘normal’ ppm atmosphere.
Rich Californians would buy Doggie-MOF jackets, or wear their detectors on their Caps, which they could then trade with other Californians
EO
Professional chemists become VERY upset when people wave their arms about taxic chemicals in the environment. Sometimes, they have spent years ensuring that their synthetic chemical are non-toxic as well as more effective than prior alternatives – like penicillin, if you want to go to early extreme examples.
Here is an extract I assembled that relates to cancer toxicity in particular. One celebrated author, Bruce Ames, was a strong advocate for widespread government regulation of chemicals before he did the U-turn that is happening now in climate science.
http://potency.berkeley.edu/pdfs/Paustenbach.pdf
In: Human and Environmental Risk Assessment: Theory and Practice
D. Paustenbach, ed., New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1415-1460 (2002)
Misconceptions About the Causes of Cancer
Lois Swirsky Gold, Bruce N. Ames and Thomas H. Slone
Summary:
The major causes of cancer are: 1) smoking, which accounts for 31% of U.S. cancer deaths and 87% of lung cancer deaths; 2) dietary imbalances which account for about another third, e.g., lack of sufficient amounts of dietary fruits and vegetables. 3) chronic infections, mostly in developing countries; and 4) hormonal factors, which are influenced primarily by lifestyle.
There is no cancer epidemic except for cancer of the lung due to smoking. Cancer mortality rates have declined 19% since 1950 (excluding lung cancer). Regulatory policy that focuses on traces of synthetic chemicals is based on misconceptions about animal cancer tests.
Recent research indicates that rodent carcinogens are not rare. Half of all chemicals tested in standard high-dose animal cancer tests, whether occurring naturally or produced synthetically, are “carcinogens”; there are high-dose effects in rodent cancer tests that are not relevant to low-dose human exposures and which contribute to the high proportion of chemicals that test positive. The focus of regulatory policy is on synthetic chemicals, although 99.9% of the chemicals humans ingest are natural.
More than 1000 chemicals have been described in coffee: 30 have been tested and 21 are rodent carcinogens. Plants in the human diet contain thousands of natural “pesticides” produced by plants to protect themselves from insects and other predators: 71 have been tested and 37 are rodent carcinogens.
There is no convincing evidence that synthetic chemical pollutants are important as a cause of human cancer.
Neither epidemiology nor toxicology supports the idea that exposures to environmental levels of synthetic industrial chemicals are important as a cause of human cancer.
That seems fairly positive to me.
Since it releases CO2 when in a low concentration environment, it could be used in agriculture. Place racks in the fields; they fill up at night, and then on still days when the growing plants eat all the nearby CO2, release more to keep them growing.
If it is really this good at capturing all those evil carbon atoms, can we use it as a substitute for coal and other fossil fuels? (/sarc?)
My father, a physician, used to refer to “the cure for which there is no disease.” This study is a perfect example: Interesting, but currently of little or no practical value. The biggest danger I see (and I hesitate to write it) is that the Government will see this and mandate its implementation on a trillion-dollar scale.
It’s not exactly CO2 capture but if you drink a good bit of alcohol your breathing slows way down.
might be useful for spacecraft and submarines, as another poster has suggested. As far as CAGW alarmists, well the more expensive and useless it is the more it will become a moral imperative for them, so unless its cheap and effective they will probably demand it be made mandatory
This process may have some minor applications as mentioned by others, but I always thought that the single most efficient method of carbon capture was to let the flora handle it. Grow trees harvest the wood and capture the carbon in houses. Plastics made from wood are very special and all plastic bags could easily be environmentally friendly. Forget enviro fuels, eat the corn and use the refuse for enviro plastic, we have the technology. Eat the Bananas and use the banana fibre it is so strong that the new Boeing 787 could be made out of it. Many researchers have been looking in all the wrong places for the answers to the right questions. The way of the world is some what askew when plant food is called a pollutant and the felling of trees is often a crime. The recycling of our forests is one of our greatest assets. When chemists such as these discover a good thing, why do they need to add cr@p to their story, if it is worthwhile commercialisation is all that is necessary for them to be successful, not a government grant.
So you’ll have to produce and store massive amounts of corn starch not to eat it or to use it industrially as a raw material but to blow some CO2 into it? Well, you probably need a storage container for those megatons of corn starch, so why not just store the CO2 in that container and do something useful with the starch?
How is this better than soda-lime, which has been used for over 100 years to absorb CO2? While the chemistry is interesting, this does seem like a solution looking for a problem.
“Other features of the Northwestern MOFs are they turn red when completely full of carbon dioxide, and the carbon capture process is reversible.”
Where are they releasing this EVIL CO2 once the plate is full?
I suppose we could store them next to the nasty spent rods and other nuclear waste.
Submariners regularly work in CO2 atmospheres of around 5 to 8000 ppm and it has no effect on them. After all we exhale at around 40,000 ppm when resting. 50,000 ppm, starts to have an effect on our system. Long way from 390 ppm uh? My pal’s huge greenhouses have around 1500 ppm CO2 and the plants need less water and grow better. As for CO2 being a pollutant and the need for capture – pure stupidity allied to politico scientific manipulated monetary greed.
Wake up you Green Hystericals and face the truth. There is no “Tipping Point” and our children are not facing anymore drought, pestilence, flooding, mega typhoons/tornados/hurricanes than have occurred for centuries. CO2 is a necessary gas and more is better than less and doesn’t need a politico/warped science Tax applied to it. Anymore than the Ozone ‘hole’ is caused by mankind. Pollution and poison are not CO2 bedfellows.
If these things are edible, the campaign against obesity is misguided. 🙂