Kitchen-Grade Baking Soda Could Help Remove Greenhouse Gases from Our Atmosphere

Scientists may have created a new class of materials that could remove greenhouse gas from power-plant emissions. The new materials could be huge in terms of carbon capture and sequestration.

For these new materials, the scientists employed a microfluidic assembly technique. This produced microcapsules that contained liquid sorbents, or asorbing materials, encased in highly permeable polymer shells.

These microcapsules have been used in everything from pharmaceuticals to agriculture. However, this is the first time that they've been used in carbon sequestration. Because power plants are the single largest source of carbon dioxide, these microcapsules could be a huge boon when it comes to preventing greenhouse gas emissions.

Current carbon-capture technology uses caustic amine-based solvents to separate CO2 from the flue gas escaping a power plant's smokestacks. Yet this results in a significant reduction in a power plant's output and can yield toxic byproduct. In this case, though, the new technique uses the sorbent sodium carbonate, which is baking soda. The microencapsulated carbon sorbents (MECS) achieve an order-of-magnitude increase in CO2 absorption rates in comparison to sorbents currently being used in carbon capture.

"MECS provide a new way to capture carbon with fewer environmental issues," said Roger D. Aines, co-lead author of the new study, in a news release. "Capturing the world's carbon emissions is a huge job. We need technology that can be applied to many kinds of carbon dioxide sources, with the public's full confidence in the safety and sustainability."

Currently, the researchers are working on enhancements to the new technique. They hope to eventually bring the capture process to scale. When that happens, it could be a huge boon to the environment; capturing greenhouse gases could help reduce the rate of global warming over time.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

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