Phys.org October 20, 2023 Three-North Afforestation Program (TNAP) in China is the largest ecological restoration project on Earth (ongoing from 1978 to 2050), harboring a huge area of newly planted forests, which provides a wealth of goods and ecosystem services that benefit society in East Asia. This project-induced carbon sink has been expected to be large, but its size and location remain uncertain. An international team of researchers (China, USA – Clemson University) investigated the changes in the C stocks of biomass, soil C and the C accumulation benefited from the ecological effects in the project areas from 1978 to […]
Category Archives: Carbon capture
Using our oceans to fight climate change
Science Daily July 24, 2023 Membrane carbon capture can play a role in negative emissions technology, such as direct air capture and direct ocean capture. Direct ocean capture has a few potential advantages over direct air capture, such as avoiding land use and coupling with offshore wind and offshore storage. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh assessed the use and feasibility of hollow fiber membrane contactors (HFMCs) for direct ocean carbon capture with benign aqueous basic carbon dioxide solvents through a multifaceted approach. A 1D HFMC model incorporated fluid dynamics and the chemical kinetics of both ocean water and aqueous […]
Scientists develop 2D nanosheets for sustainable carbon capture
Phys.org July 6, 2023 Mica, a commonly occurring mineral, has significant potential for various applications due to its unique structure and properties. However, due to its non-Van Der Waals bonded structure, it is difficult to exfoliate mica into ultrathin nanosheets. Researchers in Singapore characterized exfoliated 2D mica nanosheets (eMica nanosheets) by various techniques, and their ability to capture CO2 was tested by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Their results showed an 87% increase in CO2 adsorption capacity with eMica nanosheets compared to conventional mica. Further characterization by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), as well as first-principles calculations, showed […]
Can clay capture carbon dioxide?
Phys.org February 9, 2023 Although numerous investigations have studied the formation of H2CO3 in water from CO2, the conversion of CO2 to H2CO3 in nanopores, and how it differs from that in bulk water, has not been understood. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory used ReaxFF metadynamics molecular simulations to demonstrate striking differences in the free energy of CO2 conversion to H2CO3 in bulk and nanoconfined aqueous environments. They found that nanoconfinement not only reduces the energy barrier but also reverses the reaction from endothermic in bulk water to exothermic in nanoconfined water. Charged intermediates are observed more often under nanoconfinement […]
How to pull carbon dioxide out of seawater
MIT News February 16, 2023 In recent years, the ocean has come to be recognized as a global-scale reservoir for atmospheric CO2. Researchers at MIT have developed and demonstrated an effective asymmetric electrochemical system to capture oceanic CO2 using bismuth and silver electrodes that could capture and release chloride ions by Faradaic reactions upon application of appropriate cell voltages. The difference in reaction stoichiometry between the two electrodes enabled an electrochemical system architecture for a chloride-mediated electrochemical pH swing, which could be leveraged for effective removal of CO2 from oceanwater without costly bipolar membranes. With two silver-bismuth systems operating in […]
Getting it to stick: Designing optimal core-shell MOFs for direct air capture
Phys.org October 11, 2022 MOFs utilize porous membranes to capture large volumes of gasses and can be designed via computational modeling rather than traditional trial-and-error. However, adsorbents designed to strongly bind CO2 nearly always bind H2O strongly. A team of researchers in the US (University of Pittsburgh, DOE) has a direct air capture (DAC) strategy to remove carbon dioxide from the air using core–shell MOF design, where a high-CO2-capacity MOF “core” is protected from competitive H2O-binding via a MOF “shell” that has very slow water diffusion. They considered a high-frequency adsorption/desorption cycle that regenerates the adsorbents before water can pass […]
Effectively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
Phys.org August 13, 2021 Direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) is a comparatively new technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Since it would allow large amounts of CO2 to be trapped this technology could also reduce the greenhouse effect. To investigate how effectively this could be implemented with different system configurations of a certain process, researchers in Switzerland analyzed a total of five different configurations for capturing CO2 from the air and their use at eight different locations around the world. Autonomous system layouts prove to be a promising alternative, with a green house gases removal efficiency […]