From the University of Helsinki and the “of miniscule importance” department comes this exercise in futility.
A new method to capture carbon dioxide from the air has been developed at the University of Helsinki’s chemistry department.
The method developed by Postdoctoral Researcher Zahra Eshaghi Gorji is based on a compound of superbase and alcohol. Tests done in professor Timo Repo’s group show that the compound appears promising: one gram of the compound can absorb 156 milligrams of carbon dioxide directly from untreated ambient air. However, the compound does not react with nitrogen, oxygen or other atmospheric gases. Capasity clearly outperforms the CO2 capture methods currently in use.
The CO2 captured by the compound can be released by heating the compound at 70 °C in 30 minutes. Clean CO2 is recovered and can be recycled.
The ease of releasing CO2 is the key advantage of the new compound. In current compounds, releasing CO2 typically requires heat above 900 degrees Celsius.
– In addition, the compound can be used multiple times: the compound retained 75 percent of its original capacity after 50 cycles, and 50 percent after 100 cycles.
Non-toxic and cost-effective
The new compound was discovered by experimenting with a number of bases in different compounds, says Eshagi Gorji. The experiments lasted more than a year in total.
The most promising base proved to be 1,5,7-triazabicyclo [4.3.0] non-6-ene (TBN), developed at in the professor Ilkka Kilpeläinen’s group, which was combined with benzyl alcohol to produce the final compound.
– None of the components is expensive to produce, Eshaghi Gorji points out. In addition, the fluid is non-toxic.
The compound will now be tested in pilot plants at a near-industrial scale, rather than in grams. A solid version of the liquid compound must be made for this purpose.
– The idea is to bind the compound to compounds such as silica and graphene oxide, which promotes the interaction with carbon dioxide.
Link to article https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5c13908
Yea, it’s called growing crops, morons.
Because of the positioning of this work as a pie-in-the-sky ambient air CO2 capture technology, the cynicism is well deserved; however, if the researchers actually have any grounding in practicality, they could be pursuing using this to clean up natural gas streams or even helium recovery from gas wells. There IS a need for CO2 removal from those gas streams.
only Laboratory chemists think such chemicals are inexpensive to industrially produce…. and despite their very high molecular weight….are somehow able to react with or absorb many 44 MWt CO2 molecules when actually reacting with or absorbing 1 or 2 CO2 molecules is more likely. But then what would I know ? Having only written a couple of papers on the equipment necessary for economic selective reaction of CO2 and H2S using methyl-diethanolamine back in the 80’s….
CCS, like all sustainable programs requires government subsidy to function.
Some are saying that the socialist governments of the west are near bankrupt. This will probably only be done at universities.
Nature is way ahead of these dolts. They are called plants.
If only there was a way to split CO2 into C and O2. You could store the C in the ground and release the O2 in the atmosphere.
Oh wait, this is what trees do, on an industrial scale.
Not only do trees do it on an industrial scale, they do it on a planetary scale.
Try capturing CO2 by growing corn or wheat.
Try capturing CO2 by growing corn or wheat.
“Clean CO2 is recovered and can be recycled.”. Hoist by their own Orwellian altered-language petard: If the CO2 is clean, then it is safe to release it into the atmosphere.
For years they have been saying that CO2 is pollution and renewables are clean. Now they have found that CO2 is clean (the CO2 they release is the exact same CO2 as from anywhere else). So all CO2 can safely be released into the atmosphere. If they want the fun of CO2 catch-and-release – at their own expense of course – let them go for it. The rest of us can just add to the benefits of extra CO2 in the atmosphere by using fossil fuels and fossil fuel products – at our own expense of course.
Why not plant more trees?
Carbon should be captured in form of diamonds.
The most damning thing about this is the cycle life.
It’s down to 50% capacity after only 100 cycles.
Inevitably this means that the CO2 emissions (and other environmental damage) of its production and disposal will outweigh the CO2 it extracts from the atmosphere.
If a full analysis was done of the whole lifecycle of the operation it will turn out to be a net emitter of CO2. Yet these people are being given money to pursue this fundamentally flawed process; in this the funding bodies are just as much to blame.
So, we now have a new and improved weed killer.
And all other plant life.
/s
Trees.
There, I solved that pesky CO2 problem for you.
There are commercial uses for CO2 – e.g., carbonating drinks and preserving food (dry ice), enhanced oil recovery, welding (shielding gas), and of course boosting plant growth in greenhouses.
A cheaper more energy efficient method of isolating the CO2 for those uses and other potential uses – such as a supercritical fluid in turbines – would be most welcome.
So bring on the superbases such as ‘deep eutectic solvent (DES), composed of 1,5,7-triazabicyclo [4.3.0] non-6-ene (TBN) and benzyl alcohol”.
Sodium carbonate, a cheap chemical not derived from oil, dissolved in water absorbs CO2 from air in the cold, to make sodium bicarbonate solution.
If you then boil this solution it will release CO2 gas and reform sodium carbonate. Obviously you reuse this to capture further CO2 and repeat.
The cycle life is virtually infinite.
Sodium carbonate is so non-hazardous it is sold to the general public.
Non-flammable.
No waste organic compounds to dispose of (which would be done by incineration !!).
This may have a significant economic value if it can be applied to stripping CO2 from raw natural gas straight from the well. Today, we use amine towers for that job, and it requires much more than 70 C to regenerate the amine solutions. Further, the amines used are typically pretty toxic, and aren’t cheap.