Carbon capture is a process that removes CO2 from the air. it’s a way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in the air other than by using less fossil fuels. The process is controversial, and there’s not much buzz about carbon capture. It’s expensive with current technologies. Critics say deploying capture could delay weaning economies from fossil fuels. And, the scrubbed CO2 must be sequestered (stored) for hundreds to thousands of years. Advocates argue that CO2 emissions will continue, so some way to scrub them from the air is needed keep temperatures from rising further.A team from the Lokar Hydrocarbon Research Institute in California is developing a new material to recover CO2 from the air. It wants both to combat global warming and to reuse the CO2 it captures as a replacement for oil and gas in making plastics and fertilizers. The team combines methanol, a polyethylene-like plastic, and a fine-grained sand to produce a solid that absorbs CO2 at room temperature and releases it at 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Large scale capture of CO2 from the air awaits further development, but the new material could be used now in niche applications such as scrubbing CO2 from the air in submarines or spacecraft, or in fuel cells and large batteries.
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