Using less energy to capture and remove carbon, the material has the potential to reduce the cost of the technology and eventually support commercial applications.
By manipulating the structure of the metal organic framework material, the team of scientists and students demonstrated the ability to condense a surface area the size of a football field, into just one gram of mass - about the same as a paperclip - that acts as a sponge for CO2.
Vijay Swarup, VP of research and development at ExxonMobil, said:
- This innovative hybrid porous material has so far proven to be more effective, requires less heating and cooling, and captures more CO2 than current materials
Additional research and development will be needed to progress this technology to a larger scale pilot and ultimately to industrial scale.
The research successfully demonstrated that these hybrid porous metal-organic materials are highly selective and could capture more than 90% of the CO2 emitted from industrial sources.
The materials have much greater capacity for capturing carbon dioxide and can be regenerated for repeated use by using low-temperature steam, requiring less energy for the overall carbon capture process.