{"id":171730,"date":"2025-12-19T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=171730"},"modified":"2025-12-17T16:22:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T15:22:23","slug":"a-new-approach-to-carbon-capture-could-slash-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/a-new-approach-to-carbon-capture-could-slash-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"A new approach to carbon capture could slash costs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\u201cAt room temperature, the solution can absorb more CO2<\/sub>, and with mild heating it can release the CO2<\/sub>. There is an instant pH change when we heat up the solution a little bit,\u201d Youhong (Nancy) Guo says.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Capturing carbon dioxide from industrial plants is an important strategy in the efforts to reduce the impact of global climate change. It\u2019s used in many industries, including the production of petrochemicals, cement, and fertilizers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their new approach uses a chemical called tris \u2014 short for tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane \u2014 to stabilize the pH of the solution used to capture CO2<\/sub>, allowing the system to absorb more of the gas at relatively low temperature. The system can release CO2<\/sub> at just 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) \u2014 a dramatic improvement over conventional methods, which require temperatures exceeding 120 C to release captured carbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s something that could be implemented almost immediately in fairly standard types of equipment,\u201d says T. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering Practice at MIT<\/strong> and the senior author of the study.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Youhong (Nancy) Guo, a recent MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of applied physical sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Chemical Engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More efficient capture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Using current technologies, around 0.1 percent of global carbon emissions is captured and either stored underground or converted into other products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most widely used carbon-capture method involves running waste gases through a solution that contains chemical compounds called amines. These solutions have a high pH, which allows them to absorb CO2<\/sub>, an acidic gas. In addition to traditional amines, basic compounds called carbonates, which are inexpensive and readily available, can also capture acidic CO2<\/sub> gas. However, as CO2<\/sub> is absorbed, the pH of the solution drops quickly, limiting the CO2<\/sub> uptake capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most energy-intensive step comes once the CO2<\/sub> is absorbed, because both amine and carbonate solutions must be heated to above 120 C to release the captured carbon. This regeneration step consumes enormous amounts of energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make carbon capture by carbonates more efficient, the MIT team added tris into a potassium carbonate solution. This chemical, commonly used in lab experiments and found in some cosmetics and the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, acts as a pH buffer \u2014 a solution that helps prevent the pH from changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When added to a carbonate solution, positively charged tris balances the negative charge of the bicarbonate ions formed when CO2<\/sub> is absorbed. This stabilizes the pH, allowing the solution to absorb triple the amount of CO2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As another advantage, tris is highly sensitive to temperature changes. When the solution full of CO2<\/sub> is heated just slightly, to about 60 C, tris quickly releases protons, causing the pH to drop and the captured CO2<\/sub> to bubble out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAt room temperature, the solution can absorb more CO2<\/sub>, and with mild heating it can release the CO2<\/sub>. There is an instant pH change when we heat up the solution a little bit,\u201d Guo<\/strong> says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPotassium carbonate is one of the holy grail solvents for carbon capture due to its high chemical stability, low cost, and negligible emissions,\u201d says David Heldebrant, an associate professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at Washington State University<\/strong>, who was not involved in the study. \u201cI believe this electrochemical tris-promoted potassium carbonate solvent system has a lot of promise for the field of carbon capture, especially since the researchers have been able to improve on the energetics by regenerating at atmospheric pressure, as compared to vacuum-assisted regeneration, which is normally done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A simple swap<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To demonstrate their approach, the researchers built a continuous-flow reactor for carbon capture. First, gases containing CO2<\/sub> are bubbled through a reservoir containing carbonate and tris, which absorbs the CO2<\/sub>. That solution then is pumped into a CO2<\/sub> regeneration module, which is heated to about 60 C to release a pure stream of CO2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the CO2<\/sub> is released, the carbonate solution is cooled and returned to the reservoir for another round of CO2<\/sub> absorption and regeneration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the system can operate at relatively low temperatures, there is more flexibility in where the energy could come from, such as solar panels, electricity, or waste heat already generated by industrial plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Swapping in carbonate-tris solutions to replace conventional amines should be straightforward for industrial facilities, the researchers say. \u201cOne of the nice things about this is its simplicity, in terms of overall design. It\u2019s a drop-in approach that allows you to readily change over from one kind of solution to another,\u201d Hatton<\/strong> says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When carbon is captured from industrial plants, some of it can be diverted into the manufacture of other useful products, but most of it will likely end up being stored in underground geological formations, Hatton says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cYou can only use a small fraction of the captured CO2<\/sub> for producing chemicals before you saturate the market,\u201d he<\/strong> says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Guo is now exploring whether other additives could make the carbon capture process even more efficient by speeding up CO2<\/sub> absorption rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors acknowledge Eni S.p.A. for the fruitful discussions under the MIT\u2013Eni research framework agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Capturing carbon dioxide from industrial plants is an important strategy in the efforts to reduce the impact of global climate change. It\u2019s used in many industries, including the production of petrochemicals, cement, and fertilizers. Their new approach uses a chemical called tris \u2014 short for tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane \u2014 to stabilize the pH of the solution used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":171732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Chemical engineers have found a simple way to make capturing carbon emissions from industrial plants more energy-efficient","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[10744,15692,10416,15638,10408,13488,10743],"supplier":[3806,1936,2878],"class_list":["post-171730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-cement","tag-circulareconomy","tag-fertilizers","tag-greenchemistry","tag-petrochemicals","tag-useco2","supplier-eni-spa","supplier-massachusetts-institute-of-technology","supplier-washington-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171730"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=171730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}