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New technology: powder capable of capturing CO2 from the air with the efficiency of a mature tree in small quantities
Carbon capture and storage technologies have gained prominence in the fight against climate change. With rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, it becomes imperative to seek efficient methods to reduce the concentration of this gas, which is one of the main causes of global warming overall.
The challenge of direct CO2 capture
Traditional carbon capture methods capture CO2 from technical sources, such as power plant smokestacks. However, capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air, where it is in much lower concentrations, is a complex task.
The Direct Air Capture (DAC) is essential to reverse the increase in levels of CO2 atmospheric, which reached 426 parts per million (ppm), 50% above levels recorded before the Revolution Industrial.
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O Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlights the DAC as a fundamental tool to achieve the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1,5°C. However, this process still faces many challenges, both technological and financial.
Promising innovations: the development of COF
A major breakthrough in direct carbon capture technology has been made by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
They developed an innovative material called a Covalent Organic Framework (COF) that can capture CO2 from the environment without decomposing when it comes into contact with water or other contaminants – a common limitation in DAC technologies.
According to Professor Omar Yaghi, who led the research, COF is extremely efficient and has an impressive carbon capture capacity. Just 200 grams of the material can capture up to 20 kilograms of CO2 per year, which is equivalent to the amount of carbon absorbed by a mature tree.
Comparison with traditional materials
The COF developed by Yaghi is more stable and resistant than previous materials, such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which have been shown to be less resistant after multiple cycles of use.
This new COF, named COF-999, is composed of strong carbon-carbon and carbon-nitrogen covalent bonds, which guarantee its durability and ability to be reused in hundreds of cycles without degrading.
Zihui Zhou, a research co-author and graduate student, pointed out that capturing CO2 from flue gases helps lessen the impact of climate change, while direct air capture can reverse this effect, helping to reduce CO2 levels to safer levels.
Performance and energy efficiency
COF-999 not only captures CO2 effectively, it is also energy efficient. It releases CO2 when heated to just 60°C, a process that is much less energy intensive than liquid-mine methods, which require higher temperatures and pressures for regeneration.
Additionally, COF-999 has an impressive storage capacity, being able to hold up to 2 millimoles of CO2 per gram, outperforming many other solid sorbents used in direct carbon capture.
Durability and sustainability
One of the greatest advantages of COF-999 is its durability. The material can withstand more than 100 adsorption and desorption cycles without losing its capacity, which represents a great improvement over other materials, which degrade more quickly.
Yaghi and his team are confident that with further improvements, the COF-999 could be even more efficient.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Materials Development
Carbon capture research is advancing rapidly thanks to the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Yaghi and other scientists believe AI could be a powerful tool for predicting the best chemical conditions for new carbon capture materials, accelerating the discovery of more efficient and scalable solutions.
Yaghi, who heads the Bakar Institute for Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), is currently involved in projects that combine AI and chemistry to develop more cost-effective materials that are easy to implement on a large scale.
“The combination of AI with our expertise in chemistry is extremely exciting,” Yaghi said, emphasizing the potential for revolutionary advances in the field.
DAC technology, driven by innovations such as COF-999, offers a promising solution for capturing CO2 directly from the air and could play a critical role in combating climate change.
As technology advances and becomes more accessible, we hope that these materials can be applied on a large scale, contributing to reducing CO2 levels and meeting global climate goals.
With the persistence of researchers and the support of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the hope is that the development of solutions such as COF-999 will lead to a more sustainable future, where carbon capture technologies are a fundamental part of our strategies to mitigate environmental impacts.
