Nature – Li et al. (2024): Capturing carbon dioxide from air with charged-sorbents
Huaiguang Li, Mary E. Zick, Teedhat Trisukhon, Matteo Signorile, Xinyu Liu, Helen Eastmond, Shivani Sharma, Tristan L. Spreng, Jack Taylor, Jamie W. Gittins, Cavan Farrow, S. Alexandra Lim, Valentina Crocellà, Phillip J. Milner, Alexander C. Forse IN: Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07449-2
In this work, the authors introduce a new class of designer sorbent materials known as ‘charged-sorbents’. These materials are prepared through a battery-like charging process that accumulates ions in the pores of low-cost activated carbons, with the inserted ions then serving as sites for carbon dioxide adsorption. They use our charging process to accumulate reactive hydroxide ions in the pores of a carbon electrode, and find that the resulting sorbent material can rapidly capture carbon dioxide from ambient air by means of (bi)carbonate formation.