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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There’s nothing like a material that does nothing useful to solve a problem that is nonexistent.
Basically good for nothing, but soaking the taxpayers.
Steve C says:
September 26, 2011 at 1:22 am
At least potassium benzoate is a preservative, commonly used on humans. Err, human food, err, food eaten by humans. I didn’t see anything about which alcohol was used, that’s worth checking out before sampling this new spongecake.
Sounds worthy of a $500,000,000 government loan guarantee to me! It’s green AND red!
Edible “carbon”? Isn’t that, errrm, plant matter?
“a new class of nanostructures made of sugar, salt and alcohol”
Isn’t that a Tequila Sunrise?
Many reputable scientists are concerned that our atmosphere is suffering a CO2 drought. The levels of CO2 are near the point where plants could starve and vegetation ceases.
Considering that viewpoint, why would anyone in their right minds seek to lower atmospheric CO2?
just sayin………..
I can see it now. Power plant smokestacks full of this stuff as “scrubbers”, not for the CAGW reasons, but as a profit center. Take the modules out when full and sell them to the nearest green house as a reliable source of CO2 for plant food. The power plant operator could probably make more profit selling what is now a waste product. There are a lot of things that can be done with these with enough creativity applied.
If they take away any CO2 from my tomatoes, I’ll sue!
Brian H says:
September 26, 2011 at 2:37 am
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.
I was actually thinking about something similar to this, except you could use them as a form of chargeable plant feeders. Pump CO2 from coal or LNG plants through containers filled with them. In the high CO2 environ, they’d trap tons of it, then just distribute them throughout a field during the day to expunge it’s CO2 near crops, which already typically absorb most of the CO2 in their immediate area during the day. The real key here would be to design a system that could store for travel, and distribute the CO2 from the crystals over a large area without being too bulky, complicated or costly, since the MOFs are supposed to be so cheap to make. If the system is simple and effective enough you could get funding for this pretty easily. It would be a portable plant feeder. We’ve already seen the positive effects of growing plants in very high CO2 concentrations. We’d be able to make sure that our precious CO2 from power plants only goes into feeding the plants we want to eat… screw those rain forest plants, let them starve on 350ppm or less!
I have been working with MOFs for two years now, and they are such fashionable items in research at the moment that it is hard to distinguish the good from the crap… For sure if you write MOFs CO2 on a grant application you increase the chances to get it… Omar Yaghi is the father of MOFs, so much so that there are rumors of a Nobel prize candidature for him… But again, also the discovery of fullerenes led to a nobel prize… and mass produced fullerene products are nowhere to be seen.
As many of you here know, I have been on a hapless one-man campaign with very little luck since 2006 to get people to seriously
consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor
James Lovelock: life in “polar cities” arrayed around the shores of an
ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world, as Dot Earth blogged
about in March of 2008.
Most of you here mocked me and made fun of me, par for the course, and no hard feelings at all. But now I have teamed up with science ficiton writer in Texas to write a sci fi novel about a family
survival
saga in a fictional polar city set in 2080 in northern Alaska.
Thinking that a novel about polar cities might be useful as art,
rather than science,
I am putting the the book — as it is wriiten, chapter by chapter — online for
free for anyone to read and comment on. Here are the first three
chapters, with
another 27 to go:
http://nelsonmandelacom.blogspot.com/
I told Andy Revkin back in 2008 that my intent with my polar cities media campaign back then
was to conduct a thought experiment that might prod people out of
their comfort zone on climate — which remains, for many, a someday,
somewhere issue. But since my media outreach never
got very far, and met mostly with derision, even here at WUWT, since I of course have no academic background
or science credentials, I decided to take the polar cities meme and
turn it into a sci fi novel, a kind of “the day after” “The Day After
Tomorrow.”
It’s not Cormac McCarthy level writing, as he did so well in ‘The
Road” which won a Pulitzer,It’s more of an airport
paperback
‘polar western’ survival story, and only the Texas author’s name will
appear on the cover, as I am serving here as the book’s producer and
will
get no byline or money from the sales. It’s his book entirely, and so
far from what I’ve read, it’s the kind of sci novel that polar
opposites such as Marc Morano and Joe Rommm could both enjoy. It’s
just a story, a yarn, and it’s set in a polar city.
So the stuff captures CO2. What does one do with it then?
Oh no, see, you use them to suck up all the carbon pollution, and when they’re full, you just throw them out.
I’m with carl above…isn’t what they’re desribing robotic yeast?
Please dear mod..describing…I just get carried away sometimes!
Thanks
Charles.
[ clapping ] Now that that is settled….
Add a flavor enricher – releaser when the “cracker” turns red
Place a cracker of this on Lake Superior
Feed the fish
Let’s move on to the biggest mystery of all….why does the doors on Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine sometimes open forward and then other times open normally? 🙂
The real value, if any, would come from converting the CO2 released by the MOFs into useful compounds. And this would only be feasible if the soak and release times are fairly rapid.
The process of adsorption and later release is the same as that used in oxygen concentrators for people with breathing problems. They use molecular sieves; this CO2 concentrator is a clever use of simpler materials, but there is still the question of what use it is to concentrate CO2. At least one can breathe oxygen.
IanM
Reverse psychology. Market it as being very expensive and only rich people can afford to buy it in any amount. It’ll sell like hotcakes. Perfect match for rich folks who have drunk the coolaid and who don’t have enough sh** to do about global warming..
The next step should be to turn the captured CO2 into some organics, like alkanes, alkenes, alcohols etc. and use them as fuel. Maybe someone discover a catalysts which do the trick with a little help of sun light…
Just imagine how our greener friends would cry over a cheap, abundant and environmentally friendly energy source!!!!
Uses?
How about a human CO2 tax mask all humans would have to wear. When your sponge turns red, you have to buy another one from your local human CO2 tax office. Anyone caiught without a tax mask would be shot on sight and they forfeit all assets. All tax proceeds (and forfeitures) would be directed to the Department of Individual Extermination (DIE). This would be the first global governmental department run entirely by androids (with lifetime pensions and free oil changes, no doubt).
The report refers to all-natural ingredients as if natural substances are superior to artificial chemicals. Perhaps there is some truth to this attitude? In the 1940s I had an unpleasant experience with natural Corynebacterium diphtheriae. The natural toxin, which is lethal at about 0.1 μg of toxin per kg of bodyweight, was stymied by unnatural antitoxin, the injections of which were more uncomfortable than the disease.
“chemists published their recipe for a new class of nanostructures made of sugar, salt and alcohol”
Wait until the nanny state food police like Michelle and Bloomberg hear about this.
Maybe what I am seeing is just an artifact of the photographic process, but the dish with the “recovered” MOF on the right appears a little more red than the fresh MOF on the left. I could interpret this as it does not completely give up all of the CO2 so the collection efficiency would degrade over time. Many solid CO2 adsorbants suffer from this problem. This may not be a magic bullet.
Geoff Sherrington says:
September 26, 2011 at 2:35 am
“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.”
It was back in 1950 that Professor Doll commenced on his campaign against smoking. I remember it well since that was the same year that I became a smoker – a heavy one. He was a dermatologist by trade with no training in statistics whatever. He lived on the financial rewards of his “research” for the rest of his long life. As with practically all medical “research” there was nothing in his methods that could be equated with scientific enquiry – repetition is not practical, and it is almost impossible to eliminate statistical bias, even on those very rare occasions where a real statistician is involved. In my view the case against smoking is weaker than the case against the CO2 warmers.
If Prof. Doll’s hypothesis was right then, considering the decrease in smoking since 1950, lung cancer should be all but unknown by this time. It is not and “passive smoking” had to be invented to account for the travesty of not being able to account for the lack of a decline.