Climate challengesA Sponge to Soak Up Carbon Dioxide in the Air
Human activity is now leading to the equivalent of 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere each year, putting us on track to increase the planet’s temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2040. Increasingly, scientists are recognizing that negative emissions technologies (NETs) to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be an essential component in the strategy to mitigate climate change.
Human activity is now leading to the equivalent of 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere each year, putting us on track to increase the planet’s temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2040. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change.
Increasingly, scientists are recognizing that negative emissions technologies (NETs) to remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be an essential component in the strategy to mitigate climate change. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a multidisciplinary Department of Energy research lab, is pursuing a portfolio of negative emissions technologies and related research. These range from geological and terrestrial sequestration, to conversion to bioproducts, to thermal reactors for hydrogen fuels.
A promising technology under development for NETs is carbon capture using a material called a MOF, or metal-organic framework. Jeffrey Long, a senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and also a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry, has been working with this unique material for a number of years.
He spoke with Julie Chao of LBL’s News Center.
Julie Chao: What is a MOF and what role can it play in reducing CO2 emissions?
Jeffrey Long: A MOF, or metal-organic framework, is a type of solid material that is highly porous and behaves like a sponge, capable of soaking up vast quantities of a specific gas molecule, such as carbon dioxide. They’ve been around about 20 years, and there’s been an explosion in research over the last decade as scientists are finding more and more practical applications. What’s distinctive about MOFs is that they have extremely high internal surface areas. Just one gram of a MOF, an amount similar to a cube of sugar, can have a surface area greater than a football field. Consequently, if designed properly, a small amount of MOF can remove an enormous amount of CO2 from the exhaust gas produced by fossil fuel combustion.
