Around the world, carbon capture technology is being integrated into industrial facilities because renewable energy alone isn’t enough to reverse the climate crisis. Humanity has flooded the atmosphere with way too much carbon, and merely switching power generation sources from fossil fuels to wind and solar will not suffice. The excess carbon also needs to be removed physically from the air.
These technologies are generally installed to collect carbon from an exhaust stream. In other words, to clean up the mess before it happens. But not all factories have this technology integrated into their system. Most factories around the world are still just spewing the carbon into the air. Once it’s in the air, these technologies are of no use because carbon capture can normally only “capture carbon” in high concentrations.
By the time all the hundreds (maybe thousands) of CO2-emitting industrial facilities around the world finally have carbon capture incorporated, it’ll be too late. Furthermore, the energy sector is also transitioning towards decarbonization too slowly. Humanity has pumped about 2,000 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, and there is only going to be more.
Thankfully, a team of chemical engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have the solution to all our carbon problems. They came up with a way to tackle the emission problems on a smaller scale. They developed a device that can remove carbon dioxide right out of the air in any concentration, in small amounts or big. The project has been published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Imagine a personal-sized carbon capture machine that anyone can buy and install on their car, home, or office. It could be applied to bigger things, too, like commercial airplanes or a shopping mall. The invention is similar to a battery in form, how it works, and how it’s made. The nifty little device is the scientific world’s latest proposal to directly capture CO2 emissions, keeping them from worsening future climate disasters.
How It Works
- Electricity is pumped into the battery.
- While the device stores the charge, a chemical reaction happens, which absorbs carbon dioxide from the air.
- To extract the carbon dioxide, simply discharge the battery.
- When the battery is discharged, the carbon is released and can be pumped into the ground or elsewhere.
- The researchers call this back-and-forth system, “electroswing absorption.”
Sahag Voskian, co-leader of the project with fellow MIT chemical engineer T. Alan Hatton, said:
I realized there was a gap in the spectrum of solutions, Many current systems, for instance, are very bulky and can only be used for large-scale power plants or industrial applications.
Such a device could even be fitted to renewable energy plants to capture carbon using any excess electricity created. It could be installed in large quantities to capture more, or less, for small applications like capturing carbon from a car’s exhaust.
Voskian said:
Imagine turning the more than 2 million U.S. homes with rooftop solar into mini-carbon capture plants. The advantage of an electricity-based system for carbon capture is that it scales linearly. If you need 10 times more capacity, you simply build 10 times more of these ‘electroswing batteries’ and stack them.
He calculated that with about 100,000 football fields full of rows, stacked with electroswing batteries, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would return to preindustrial levels within 40 years. That may sound like a lot, but if you spread all those batteries out across the world, one here, a couple there, you’d reach the 100,000 football field requirement in no time! There are already 2 million homes in America alone with rooftop solar. Think of the difference it would make if all of them were retrofitted with one of these electroswing batteries and turned into a mini-carbon capture plant.
