{"id":24115,"date":"2021-03-07T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/graphene-filter-makes-carbon-capture-more-efficient-and-cheaper\/"},"modified":"2021-10-12T09:32:34","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T07:32:34","slug":"graphene-filter-makes-carbon-capture-more-efficient-and-cheaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/graphene-filter-makes-carbon-capture-more-efficient-and-cheaper\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphene filter makes carbon capture more efficient and cheaper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">Chemical engineers at EPFL have developed a graphene filter for carbon capture that surpasses the efficiency of commercial capture technologies, and can reduce the cost carbon capture down to $30 per ton of carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">One of the main culprits of global warming is the vast amount of carbon dioxide pumped out into the atmosphere mostly from burning fossil fuels and the production of steel and cement. In response, scientists have been trying out a process that can sequester waste carbon dioxide, transporting it into a storage site, and then depositing it at a place where it cannot enter the atmosphere.<\/p><div class=\"autoestrada-nel-contenuto autoestrada-entity-placement\" id=\"autoestrada-932809821\" style=\"position: relative;padding: 30px;border: 2px solid red;margin: 25px auto 35px;text-align: center;width: fit-content;\"><div class=\"autoestrada-adlabel\">Advertising<\/div><div id=\"autoestrada-846604810\"><!-- START ADVERTISER: from tradedoubler.com -->\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\nvar uri = 'https:\/\/impfr.tradedoubler.com\/imp?type(img)g(25401758)a(2263928)' + new String (Math.random()).substring (2, 11);\r\ndocument.write('<a href=\"https:\/\/clk.tradedoubler.com\/click?p=320153&a=2263928&g=25401758\" target=\"_BLANK\"><img src=\"'+uri+'\" border=0><\\\/a>');\r\n<\/script>\r\n<!-- END ADVERTISER: from tradedoubler.com -->\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">The problem is that capturing carbon from power plants and industrial emissions isn\u2019t very cost-effective. The main reason is that waste carbon dioxide isn\u2019t emitted pure, but is mixed with nitrogen and other gases, and extracting it from industrial emissions requires extra energy consumption \u2013 meaning a pricier bill.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">Scientists have been trying to develop an energy-efficient carbon dioxide-filter. Referred to as a \u201cmembrane\u201d, this technology can extract carbon dioxide out of the gas mix, which can then be either stored or converted into useful chemicals. \u201cHowever, the performance of current carbon dioxide filters has been limited by the fundamental properties of currently available materials,\u201d explains Professor Kumar Varoon Agrawal at EPFL\u2019s School of Basic Sciences (EPFL Valais Wallis).<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Now, Agrawal has led a team of chemical engineers to develop the world\u2019s thinnest filter from graphene, the world-famous \u201cwonder material\u201d that won the Physics Nobel in 2010. But the graphene filter isn\u2019t just the thinnest in the world, it can also separate carbon dioxide from a mix of gases such as those coming out of industrial emissions and do so with an efficiency and speed that surpasses most current filters. The work is\u00a0published in\u00a0Science Advances.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\u201c<span lang=\"en-US\">Our approach was simple,\u201d says Agrawal. \u201cWe made carbon dioxide-sized holes in graphene, which allowed carbon dioxide to flow through while blocking other gases such as nitrogen, which are larger than carbon dioxide.\u201d The result is a record-high carbon dioxide-capture performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">For comparison, current filters are required to exceed 1000 gas permeation units (GPUs), while their carbon-capturing specificity, referred to as their \u201ccarbon dioxide\/nitrogen\u00a0separation factor\u201d must be above 20. The membranes that the EPFL scientists developed show more than ten-fold higher carbon dioxide\u00a0permeance at 11,800 GPUs, while their separation factor stands at 22.5.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\u201c<span lang=\"en-US\">We estimate that this technology will drop the cost of carbon capture close to $30 per ton of carbon dioxide, in contrast to commercial processes where the cost is two-to-four time higher,\u201d says Agrawal. His team is now working on scaling up the process by developing a pilot plant demonstrator to capture 10 kg carbon dioxide per day, in a project funded by the Swiss government and Swiss industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chemical engineers at EPFL have developed a graphene filter for carbon capture that surpasses the efficiency of commercial capture technologies, and can reduce the cost carbon capture down to $30 per ton of carbon dioxide. One of the main culprits of global warming is the vast amount of carbon dioxide pumped out into the atmosphere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-nonsoloauto-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28127,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24115\/revisions\/28127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/autoestrada.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}