This Material Could Reduce CO2 From Coal Plants After Record Emissions Last Year, Study Finds

Topline

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) say that a material called aluminum formate could be used to scrub carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks before it even reaches the atmosphere, which accounts for 30% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study published Wednesday in the the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.

Smoke stacks at the Bao Steel mill in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.

Corbis via Getty Images

Key Facts

Aluminum formate is part of a class of substances called metal-organic frameworks that have exhibited potential for filtering and separating organic materials, according to NIST, and the material can separate carbon dioxide from the other gasses that are emitted out of coal-fired power plants’ smokestacks.

Aluminum formate is made out of aluminum hydroxide and formic acid, two chemicals that are abundant, easy to acquire and far less expensive than similarly performing substances and would cost less than a dollar per kilogram, according to Nist’s Hayden Evans, one of the lead authors of the research paper, who noted in a statement it was about 100 times less expensive than other materials with similar performance.

Finding ways to reduce power plants’ emissions as the world explores alternative energy sources, like wind and solar power, could help mitigate the effects of coal plants while they remain in operation, according to Nist.

However, using aluminum formate could require tens of thousands of tons of the filtration material to capture carbon at a single plant, according to the study, and despite its potential, aluminum formate is not ready for immediate use, researchers said.

Large-scale carbon capture would require new engineering procedures to produce large amounts of aluminum formate, according to the paper, and a coal-fire plant would need to have a compatible process in place to reduce the humidity of the gas before scrubbing.

Evans said what to do with the CO2 material afterward is also a hurdle, though research is under way to convert it into formic acid, one of aluminum formate’s two constituents, in what could become a cyclic process, he said.

Big Number

36.3 billion. That’s how many tons of carbon dioxide were emitted worldwide in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency. It’s the highest level ever recorded and represents a 6% increase from the previous year as the world economy bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic slowdown.

Key Background

Coal-fired power plants are among the main drivers of carbon emissions and drive nearly one third of global greenhouse gasses, according to the team, which comprised researchers from the National University of Singapore, Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research, the University of Delaware and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Last week, the United Nations released a study that found under current conditions, global temperatures are projected to increase by 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That figure is significantly higher than the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius during the same amount of time. Officials have warned not meeting that goal could result in severe climate change effects including drought, wildfires, rising sea levels and worsening hunger. Since the early 1990s, heat waves pushed by climate change have cost the global economy at least $16 trillion, according to a Science Advances study published last week. It has primarily affected people living in the world’s poorest countries, researchers found.

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