What if we could concentrate the power of an entire tree in less than 200 grams of dust? It's no longer a hypothetical question: a team from Berkeley has created COF-999, a yellow powder that is rewriting the rules of carbon capture. It's a breakthrough that could dramatically accelerate our ability to clean the atmosphere.
CO2 capture in numbers
A large tree can absorb up to 40 kilograms of carbon dioxide in a year. Now, researchers at theUniversity of Berkeley they have created something extraordinary: a powder that can achieve the same results with a 200 gram dose.
The discovery, published in the magazine Nature, comes at a crucial time. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii records atmospheric CO2 levels around 423 ppm, dangerously close to the critical threshold of 450 ppm.
Omar Yaghi, a chemist at Berkeley and senior author of the study, is very clear: “We have no alternative. Even if we stopped emitting CO2, we would still have to remove the excess from the air.”
Big idea, microscopic design
Under the electron microscope, this powder reveals a fascinating secret. As he tells Zihui Zhou, the materials chemist leading the study, the dust resembles a field of tiny basketballs with billions of holes.
The structure is held together by incredibly strong chemical bonds, the same ones that turn carbon into diamonds. Attached to this scaffolding are amines, organic chemical compounds derived from ammonia that play a crucial role in both biological processes and numerous industrial applications.
In a nutshell, this microscopic architecture was designed like this: when air passes through these structures, most of its components pass through undisturbed, but amines, which are basic, selectively capture CO2, which is acidic.
A technology that really works
Field tests have yielded surprising results. The team filled a straw-sized tube with COF-999 powder and exposed it to Berkeley air for 20 consecutive days.
It works beautifully. Based on the stability and behavior of the material, we think it can go up to thousands of cycles.
The air entering the tube contained CO2 concentrations between 410 and 517 ppm. When he came out on the other side, the researchers they could not detect any trace of carbon dioxide.
A promising industrial future
Capturing CO2 with this material has several advantages. The porous design increases the available surface area, allowing for the capture carbon dioxide “at least 10 times faster” than other materials, according to Zhou.
The team continued to refine the process, and Yaghi plans to double its capacity within the next year. Additionally, COF-999 releases CO2 when heated to just 60 degrees Celsius, far less than the 121 degrees required by comparable materials.
Klaus Lackner, Director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions of the University of Arizona, sees promising potential: “They’re opening a door to a new family of approaches.”
CO2 Capture, the Way Forward
For industrial scale use, it will be necessary to design large metal containers that allow air to pass through the dust without dispersing it. Yaghi believes that a version of COF-999 could be ready for direct air capture systems within two years.
The technology will have to become “10 times cheaper than it is now” before it can make a real difference on the billions of tons of CO2 that scientists would like to remove from the atmosphere.
I like to think that this innovation represents an important step towards a more sustainable future. It is not the final solution, but it is certainly a significant advance in our fight against climate change.
