Direct air capture may be key to saving Earth from the effects of climate change, but there’s a catch: It’s really hard to do.
October 11, 2022
Direct air capture may be key to saving Earth from the effects of climate change, but there’s a catch: It’s really hard to do.
Direct air capture (DAC) technologies are designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air, although there’s still a lot of room for improvement in DAC materials. Other molecules in the air, especially water, are in much higher concentrations than carbon dioxide, or CO2. They start competing with each other, and ultimately, carbon dioxide isn’t what’s caught —at least in high quantities.
“If materials are good at grabbing carbon dioxide, they’re usually good at grabbing multiple gases,” explained Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. “It’s really hard to tune these materials to grab carbon dioxide but nothing else, and that’s what this research is focused on.”
Hornbostel is joined by co-investigators Nathaniel Rosi, a Pitt chemistry professor with a secondary appointment in the Swanson School and Christopher E. Wilmer, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in the Swanson School.
