Compound that captures Carbon could save the environment

Global warming is a major concern which people are aware now but for the past few decades the condition was not as serious as it is now. The world is getting warmer. Whether the cause is human activity or natural variability—and the preponderance of evidence says it’s humans—thermometer readings all around the world have risen steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. This may cause serious problems and to lower the earth temperature will ensure a safer future for our coming generation.

 A new mechanism for highly efficient CO2 uptake in carbon-capturing materials has been discovered by an international collaboration from EPFL’s Energy Center. The novel mechanism, published in Nature, offers an energy-efficient route to carbon capture. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous crystal structures made from metal nodes that are connected through organic linkers. MOFs are at the center of carbon-capturing efforts, as they are chemically tunable and can adsorb(to make something staggered on or below the surface) carbon with high efficiency.

MOFs can be used to remove the carbon form the atmosphere to the factories where various forms of carbon like Co2, CH4 gases are produced. scientists have found that inserting CO2 in a metal-amine bond of MOFs can trigger a highly efficient chain reaction of CO2 uptake. The researchers took advantage of the chemical versatility of MOFs, and were able to optimize the conditions of the chain reaction by altering the metal atoms at the nodes of the MOF’s structure.

As a result of this, the MOFs can achieve large capacities in separating CO2 from the atmosphere with only small temperature changes. Meanwhile, the energy required to regenerate MOFs following release of captured CO2 was lower than even state-of-the-art liquid amine solutions. The two most promising MOFs were based on magnesium and manganese, and were able to operate at high temperatures.

The results provide a template for designing highly efficient adsorbent materials that can remove CO2 from various gas mixtures. Compared to available technologies, this design offers advantages in terms of reduced sorbent regeneration energy and reduced materials and system costs.