(679e) A New Paradigm of Anthropogenic CO2 Reduction: Adsorptive Fixation of CO2 From the Ambient Air as a Carbon Negative Technology

In recent years, growing concern about the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on global climate change have motivated significant interest ain renewable energy technologies that are or can be carbon neutral, such as use of wind, solar and biomass-based energy. This is because the atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen about 35% to a value of 380 ppm since the industrial revolution due to widespread use of fossil fuels. Even in the face of significant growth of renewable energy usage, it is expected that the atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to rise over the next decades. To this end, capture of CO2 from large point sources such as fossil fuel burning power plants has been proposed as a means to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions, with the captured CO2 sequestered permanently or semi-permenantly geologically, or used to some degree in the synthesis of fuels or chemicals. However, it should be noted that this approach can be at best carbon neutral, and as such, it does not offer the possibility to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels below where they are today. Furthermore, capture of CO2 from distributed sources such as cars, planes and ships appears economically unfeasible.

In contrast, CO2 capture from the ambient air can be carbon negative. This approach has been largely overlooked due to the perceived technical difficulty and cost associated with capturing CO2 from such a low concentration source. In this talk, a new concept of CO2 capture technique will be presented, which is capable of removing CO2 from the ambient atmosphere by means of the CO2 fixation on the solid adsorbent materials. Different types of solid sorbents have been prepared and tested evaluated for their adsorption capabilities using CO2 at a concentration of 400 ppm, to demonstrate the effectiveness of this idea. Experimental data obtained strongly suggest that this concept, i.e., CO2 capture from ambient air using solid sorbents, is a promising strategy that may be used to reduce the level of CO2 from the atmosphere.