Material captures carbon

US researchers have developed a new material for capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants and other generators of the greenhouse gas. Produced with a simple one-step chemical process, the new material has a high capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide and can be reused many times.

Existing CO₂ capture techniques involve the use of solid materials that lack sufficient stability for repeated use, or liquid adsorbents that are expensive and require significant amounts of energy.

'This is something that you could imagine scaling up for commercial use,' said Christopher Jones, a professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 'Our material has the combination of high capacity, easy synthesis, low cost and an ability to be recycled - all the key criteria for an adsorbent that would be used on an industrial scale.'

Details of the new material, known as hyperbranched aluminosilica (HAS), are scheduled to appear in the March 19 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was supported by the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.