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Carbon Capture Breakthrough — Unleashing The Power Of Chemistry To Reduce Emissions

By Sandra Hajda
Published on: 19:50 PST, Jul 5, 2016

Scientists from the University of York have developed a new method of capturing carbon dioxide emissions from large-scale producers such as power plants and chemical factories, reports Eureka Alert.

A team of scientists in England have found a better way to capture carbon from power plant emissions.

The team published their findings in a paper in the chemistry journal, Angewandte Chemie, reports UPI.

Because it’s relatively cheap and easy to produce, researchers at York hope Starbons filters will become widespread atop the smokestacks of power plants in Europe and elsewhere.

Most carbon capture methods currently in use treat emissions from chemical plants and refineries using liquid solutions — an example of this is amine treating. Such methods require a lot of input energy to generate a relatively low output, and they are expensive to run, reports Phys.

The new method uses Starbons, compounds made from waste biomass like food peelings and seaweed, and results in the absorption of up to 65 percent more CO2 than other methods.

The synthetic make-up of Starbons, which contains pores, results in the absorption of up to 65 percent more CO2 than other methods.

The key attribute enabling this increase in absorption is the large surface area created by the tiny holes present in Starbons. The holes are more selective in capturing CO2 when mixed with nitrogen, with results showing a capture rate of 20:1 rather than 5:1. In other words, the method is ­ four times more selective than other methods.

The key to their new and improved technique is patented carbon-derived biomass material called Starbons. Starbons, which was pioneered a decade ago by scientists at the University of York, is made using biomass waste like food peelings and seaweed. Its key attribute is its porosity. Lots of tiny holes allow Starbons to capture lots of CO2.

“This work is of fundamental importance in overturning established wisdom associated with gas capture by solids. It defies current accepted scientific understanding of the efficiency of carbon­ capturing CO2”, said Professor Michael North, Professor of Green Chemistry at the University of York, one of the researchers who contributed to the paper.

The new, enhanced method for carbon capture uses a sustainable material and has the potential to help to reduce emissions dramatically. It is hoped that the Starbon filters will be taken up by commercial enterprises and used to separate CO2 from waste streams.

James Clark, the head of York’s Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, said that the low cost and high scale-ability of the method, in addition to the newly-optimized chemistry, makes it very promising.

“The high CO2 adsorption, high selectivity, rapid kinetics and water tolerance, combined with the low cost and ease of large scale production from waste biomass, gives Starbons great potential. We hope to offer the product as a commercial capture agent for separating CO2 from chemical or power station waste streams.”

The carbon capture breakthrough comes as Norway proposes a plan to have a national carbon storage plan by 2022, reports Reuters.

If Norway goes ahead with the plan, carbon emissions could drop worldwide: the International Energy Agency says deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is critical for reducing carbon emissions but wide adoption of the technology has been frustrated partly due to high costs.

In 2014, Canada’s Saskatchewan Power opened the world’s first coal-­fired power plant retro-fitted with CCS. There are now 15 large-­scale CCS projects in operation, according to the Global CCS Institute, an Australian­-based lobby.

The Norwegian oil and energy ministry released a feasibility study on Monday, saying that every step in the process could be set up within six years. The cost estimates had an uncertainty of 40 percent on the lower and upper end of the scale.

“The cost for planning and investment for such a chain is estimated at between 7.2 and 12.6 billion crowns (excluding VAT).”

The new technology will help to drop the price tag on the costly large­-scale project of capturing carbon dioxide — the overwhelmed former Norwegian government said that the task is comparable in ambitiousness to sending people to the Moon.

Unlike most other countries Norway has a huge sovereign wealth fund whose goal is to invest in the future of the country. It has been a world leader in green investment in the past.

[Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images]

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