“Researchers find that clay can be used for carbon capture

Posted by Jeff on Jul 6, 2015 @ 11:29 am in Conservation | 0 comments | Last modified: July 6, 2015

Carbon capture will play a central role in helping the nations of the world manage and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Many materials are being tested for the purpose of capturing CO2. New results show that ordinary clay can work just as effectively as more advanced materials.

“It is quite remarkable that clay can capture as much CO2 as other materials that are being investigated,” says Jon Otto Fossum, professor at the Department of Physics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Clay offers many benefits compared to other materials, particularly because other potential materials can be expensive, difficult to produce, toxic and not particularly environmentally friendly.

A possible practical future use of this discovery could be to include clays in CO2 filters for industrial-scale CO2 emissions reduction.

A good material for capturing CO2 must meet specific requirements. It should have a large surface area and good adsorbtion capability. It should be able to capture CO2 selectively before it captures other molecules, it should not need a lot of energy for it to work, and it must be reusable. Moreover, it must be inexpensive and environmentally friendly.

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