Scientists have set out a way to suck planet-heating carbon pollution from the air, turn it into sodium bicarbonate and store it in oceans, according to a new paper. The technique could be up to three times more efficient than current carbon capture technology, say the authors of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances….
The team have used copper to modify the absorbent material used in direct air capture. The result is an absorbent “which can remove CO2 from the atmosphere at ultra-dilute concentration at a capacity which is two to three times greater than existing absorbents,” Arup SenGupta, a professor at Lehigh University and a study author, told CNN. This material can be produced easily and cheaply and would help drive down the costs of direct air capture, he added. Once the carbon dioxide is captured, it can then be turned into sodium bicarbonate — baking soda — using seawater and released into the ocean at a small concentration.
The oceans “are infinite sinks,” SenGupta said. “If you put all the CO2 from the atmosphere, emitted every day — or every year — into the ocean, the increase in concentration would be very, very minor,” he said. SenGupta’s idea is that direct air capture plants can be located offshore, giving them access to abundant amounts of seawater for the process.
Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study, told CNN that the chemistry was “novel and elegant.” The process is a modification of one we already know, he said, “which is easier to understand, scale-up and develop than something totally new.”
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