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.
Food prices are high enough because of using corn to make fuel, for no real reason, the last thing we need to do is use more corn to make co2 sponges for no reason.
If you want to sequester carbon, it’s cheaper to grow a tree, and then cut the wood up and build a building. This is nuts.
Nerve Gas and Nuclear Reactors are made from all-natural materials too. Such a useless phrase.
Some other posters have suggested it might be useful for spacecraft and submarines.
This is only the case if the capture and release concerntrations are at usefull levels.
There is nothing in the abstract, and I cannot access the full text, to find out what concerntration of CO2 in the atmosphere causes the compound to bind to the CO2, and what concerntration causes that bond to reverse and release the co2.
I would guess that it is very high concerntrations, >50% that cause absorption and binding, and low, <1% that trigger release. This would make it unsuitable for CO2 scrubbing a breathable atmosphere.
It might make it usefull for the removal of CO2 from natural gas. Especially from the new shale fields which are accesable via fracking. However there are already commercial systems that can do this and it is unclear that this compound would have any advantages in efficiency or economics over the present methods.
It sounds like basic research in an area driven by political considerations. Now if we can only sort the politics from the research, some good might eventually come of it in unexpected areas. If we can’t, it could easily turn into another green tax-dollar sink along the lines of ethanol, solar cells, windmills and “Cash for Clunkers”.
I love this. You can take a CO2 source and transfer it Green houses and other locations in which you can then release the CO2 providing a much richer diet of CO2 without the need to burn combustible materials during summer time and the like.
The potential for profit since the material is reusable is huge and if it allows companies to gt past the nanny state for now while bringing a product to bear then so much the better. Fire up the coal power plant we got some sugar to saturate!
Spongeworthy??? Anthony, you have gone all Elaine Benes on us. If they incorporate the MOF’s into edible underwear the question arises whether you change them or eat them when they turn red.
🙂
I wonder if it is tuneable? That is, can you set the CO2 concentration at which the matrix becomes “full”. If so, you could use it to make a CO2 meter.
This bar becomes red at Xppm. The next bar turns red at Yppm. Etc.
My first thought was use as some sort of warning indicator for areas around active volcanos, since volcanos sometimes create pockets of CO2 in concentrations that can kill people and animals. Rather like those little papers that change color according to radiation levels or nerve gases. But I guess all the ash and lava and such is a pretty good warning system too.
“And the compounds themselves are carbon-neutral.”
End of the first paragraph. Agenda-smuggling FAIL.
There’s a brilliant long-term use for this neat MOF!
They can be used to store all that nasty CO2 which boils the planet, so there’s only the barest minimum left.
And then … comes the next ice age, it can all be released – melting all that ice, stopping the glaciers from advancing, oh yes!
And all the watermelons would be happy!
(Well, probably not: nothing will make watermelons happy …)
:-))
Think of the burgers that could be made from metal-organic frameworks. All that and a bag of chips!
Well as the slogan has it, “Cutting Carbon Kills”.
Bah, Northwestern University! At University of Illinois, we don’t need no stinking nanotubes and buckyballs, try using biochar…..no research needed.
http://www.istc.illinois.edu/research/biochar.cfm
Go cats go!
Interesting finding that kinda relates. From PennState. http://live.psu.edu/story/55172#rss49
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A grain of salt or two may be all that microbial electrolysis cells need to produce hydrogen from wastewater or organic byproducts, without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or using grid electricity, according to Penn State engineers.
What appears to be overlooked by most commenters in regards to CO2 capture applications (wether they make sense or not) is the following:
A normal combustion power plant uses air as oxygen source. Which means the exhaust gas volume is still ~60-70% nitrogen even if all the carbon burned has been converted to CO2. With natural gas (less with coal) you also convert a lot of the hydrogen part of the fuel to H2O (H to C ratio of natural gas is ~4 as it is mostly methane, CH4). If you want to sequester the CO2 you have to separate it from the H2O and N2 in the exhaust. This described new material could theoretically be used for that separation, which is otherwise energetically expensive. Another way is to run the combustion process with pure O2 instead of air, which means you need to separate O2 out of the air, which is also expensive, both cost-wise and energetically and only beneficial for almost pure carbon combustion.
Wait a second – all the talk about absorbing CO2 (not a pollutant), and no talk about absorbing Carbon MONOXIDE (a CO concentration of 1600 ppm is deadly after one hour).
The maximum exposure allowed by OSHA in the workplace over an eight hour period is 35 ppm.
Updated reporting has been done for the years 1999-2004 revealing CO poisoning as a contributing cause of death in 16400 deaths.
Seems to me they could actually save lives, instead of dealing with a “green” plan.