dsharp
02-17-2008, 11:52 AM
Here is an abstract of the article from CBC News:
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/tech-carbon-capture.html
Scientists have created metal-organic crystals capable of soaking up carbon dioxide gas like a sponge, which could be used to keep industrial emissions of the gas out of the atmosphere.
Chemists at the University of California Los Angeles said the crystals — which go by the name zeolitic imidazolate frameworks, or ZIFs — can be tailored to absorb and trap specific molecules.
The porous materials can be designed to soak up specific molecules, such as carbon dioxide, making them potentially useful to trap the greenhouse gas.
"The technical challenge of selectively removing carbon dioxide has been overcome," said UCLA chemistry professor Omar Yaghi in a statement.
"Now we have structures that can be tailored precisely to capture carbon dioxide and store it like a reservoir, as we have demonstrated.
Yaghi and his colleagues describe their findings in the Friday issue of the journal Science.
Little energy needed to create crystals
He said the crystals are non-toxic and would require little extra energy from a power plant, making them an ideal alternative to current methods of CO2 filtering.
The researchers created all 25 crystals by combining their raw materials in thousands of chemical reactions, which they say is similar to the high-throughput methods used in pharmaceutical research.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/tech-carbon-capture.html
Scientists have created metal-organic crystals capable of soaking up carbon dioxide gas like a sponge, which could be used to keep industrial emissions of the gas out of the atmosphere.
Chemists at the University of California Los Angeles said the crystals — which go by the name zeolitic imidazolate frameworks, or ZIFs — can be tailored to absorb and trap specific molecules.
The porous materials can be designed to soak up specific molecules, such as carbon dioxide, making them potentially useful to trap the greenhouse gas.
"The technical challenge of selectively removing carbon dioxide has been overcome," said UCLA chemistry professor Omar Yaghi in a statement.
"Now we have structures that can be tailored precisely to capture carbon dioxide and store it like a reservoir, as we have demonstrated.
Yaghi and his colleagues describe their findings in the Friday issue of the journal Science.
Little energy needed to create crystals
He said the crystals are non-toxic and would require little extra energy from a power plant, making them an ideal alternative to current methods of CO2 filtering.
The researchers created all 25 crystals by combining their raw materials in thousands of chemical reactions, which they say is similar to the high-throughput methods used in pharmaceutical research.