Breakthrough in capturing ‘hot’ CO2 from industrial exhaust

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By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. 

Excerpt: Industrial plants, such as those that make cement or steel, emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, but the exhaust is too hot for state-of-the-art carbon removal technology. Lots of energy and water are needed to cool the exhaust streams, a requirement that has limited adoption of CO2 capture in some of the most polluting industries. Now, chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that a porous material can act like a sponge to capture CO2 at temperatures close to those of many industrial exhaust streams. The material — a type of metal-organic framework, or MOF — will be described in a paper to be published in the Nov. 15 print edition of the journal Science. ...“We need to start thinking about the CO2 emissions from industries, like making steel and making cement, that are hard to decarbonize, because it’s likely that they’re still going to be emitting CO2, even as our energy infrastructure shifts more toward renewables,” Rohde said.... 

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