The fight against climate change may have found a new secret weapon in the form of a carbon-capturing powder that is capable of sucking up and storing as much carbon dioxide as a fully-grown tree.
Attempts to remove carbon from the air have been popping up all around the scientific community, especially as the climate change crisis continues to get worse. However, most of these carbon-removal techniques are still in the early design phase or just aren’t efficient enough to actually balance out the emissions we’re putting out.
With trees’ ability to remove carbon slowly dwindling as they become too full, scientists have continued to look for other methods to alleviate one of humanity’s worst greenhouse gas emissions. This carbon-capturing powder could very well be our first real chance at balancing things out.
The powder is a porous material that can adsorb carbon dioxide as the air passes through it. And no, “adsorb” isn’t a misspelling. While some materials absorb things, this powder actually adsorbs the carbon dioxide, keeping its molecules trapped on the surface instead of becoming soaked by them.
This means that the carbon-capturing powder can work even more effectively because it isn’t becoming soaked with carbon dioxide like trees and other removal methods. Instead, adsorbing means that you can then release it somewhere else, allowing you to clean the air and store the CO2 in a place where it won’t be released back into the atmosphere.
To test the efficiency of the powder, the researchers placed some of it in a tube and then passed air from Berkely through it. They found that it was able to capture 100 percent of the carbon dioxide from the air. The researchers say that the powder breaks new ground in the fight against climate change and that there’s nothing else like it out there at the moment.
A paper on these findings is published in the journal Nature.
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