Can Scientists Tell Carbon Dioxide to Scram, to "Take a Powder"?

“You have to take CO 2 from the air — there’s no way around it,” said “Even if we stop emitting CO 2 , we still need to take it out of the air. We don’t have any other options.” 

Omar Yaghi, a reticular chemist at UC Berkeley who is also chief scientist at Berkeley’s Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet.

So, most of climate change efforts are engaged towards finding alternative sources of power, shifting away from fossil fuel driven cars, electricity generating plants and factories. From Bill Gates with his TerraPower investment, a “Natrium” liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactor, now under construction in Kemmerer, Wyoming to new wind and solar farms, sensible construction designs and geothermal alternatives, event these nascent efforts just aren’t enough. The slam of recent hurricanes inflicting massive damage to the southeast should (but doesn’t) convince the climate change skeptics that they a wrong, sometimes dead wrong! The entire MAGA GOP has stated that they will pull all of the climate initiatives in the Biden-sponsored (and passed) in his infrastructure legislation. That would only make a bad situation unbearable. And no, Mr Speaker, God is not coming in to save the day… the responsibility is all ours.

Are they crazy? The realities are scientifically undeniable. Much of the resulting global migration is causing immigration issues to rise as one of the highest-level global political footballs, not just here in the US. As once productive agricultural land is decimated by climate change driven disasters, in addition to fleeing from regional violence, many are no longer able to sustain even subsistence farming any more. Much of the Earth is already uninhabitable… much more is on the edge of that harsh inevitability. So. what’s missing? What are we not really taking seriously?

In addition to alternative energy, reducing power usage and learning to live in an energy limited world, we actually need to figure out how to extract sufficient greenhouses gasses by massive amounts. Replanting forests, preserving what we have with greater care, are part of that effort… also understanding that the vegetation beneath our oceans is also mission critical, but we need to be more proactive. Universities are designing, and experimental carbon extraction efforts are being deployed with increasing efficiency (the image, above left, reflects an MIT design). Where there are massive accumulations of carbon dioxide, these machines work well enough, but the extraction levels needed to make a difference are incomprehensibly huge.

In October of 2019, MIT reported on a system that can generate electricity, then focus on the CO2 build-up efficiently: “Most methods of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of gas require higher concentrations, such as those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants. A few variations have been developed that can work with the low concentrations found in air, but the new method is significantly less energy-intensive and expensive, the researchers say… The device is essentially a large, specialized battery that absorbs carbon dioxide from the air (or other gas stream) passing over its electrodes as it is being charged up, and then releases the gas as it is being discharged. In operation, the device would simply alternate between charging and discharging, with fresh air or feed gas being blown through the system during the charging cycle, and then the pure, concentrated carbon dioxide being blown out during the discharging.

“As the battery charges, an electrochemical reaction takes place at the surface of each of a stack of electrodes. These are coated with a compound called polyanthraquinone, which is composited with carbon nanotubes. The electrodes have a natural affinity for carbon dioxide and readily react with its molecules in the airstream or feed gas, even when it is present at very low concentrations. The reverse reaction takes place when the battery is discharged — during which the device can provide part of the power needed for the whole system — and in the process ejects a stream of pure carbon dioxide. The whole system operates at room temperature and normal air pressure.”

But there is an even newer technique, using a fairly inexpensive powder developed at Berkeley, that promises a much more efficient CO2 extraction process: “A typical large tree can suck as much as 40 kilograms of carbon dioxide out of the air over the course of a year. Now scientists at UC Berkeley say they can do the same job with less than half a pound of a fluffy yellow powder…

“The powder was designed to trap the greenhouse gas in its microscopic pores, then release it when it’s ready to be squirreled away someplace where it can’t contribute to global warming. In tests, the material was still in fine form after 100 such cycles, according to a study published Wednesday [10/24] in the journal Nature… ‘It performs beautifully,’ said Omar Yaghi, a reticular chemist at UC Berkeley and the study’s senior author. ‘Based on the stability and the behavior of the material right now, we think it will go to thousands of cycles.’

“Dubbed COF-999, the powder could be deployed in the kinds of large-scale direct air-capture [DAC] plants that are starting to come online to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere… Keeping the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide below 450 parts per million is necessary to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and prevent some of the most dire consequences of climate change, scientists say. Measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii indicate that CO 2 levels are currently around 423 ppm.

“‘You have to take CO 2 from the air — there’s no way around it,’ said Yaghi, who is also chief scientist at Berkeley’s Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet. ‘Even if we stop emitting CO 2, we still need to take it out of the air. We don’t have any other options.’” Karen Kaplan writing for the October 24th FastCompany.com. As politicians and large corporations remain unwilling to spend what it takes to fix or give up revenue sources built over a century, disasters are increasingly making life exceptionally difficult and expensive… or simply taking lives. The clock is ticking… and time is definitely not our ally. We really cannot live with unchecked CO2 release at anywhere near current levels.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as nations and their leaders dawdle, Mother Nature, armed with the immutable laws of physics, could care less; she started with nothing and can do it again… or not.