Researchers at Rice University in Texas have set out to map out exactly how temperature, pressure, surface area, pore size, and the presence of additional elements impact the efficiency of natural gas “sweetening,” removing carbon dioxide. “What we’ve done is provide a recipe to make carbon capture materials the best they can be,” Rice chemist Andrew Barron said in a university press release.
In its latest research, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Barron’s team discovered that the positive effect of increasing the porosity and surface area of a capture material eventually hits a ceiling. “The traditional sense has been the more surface area and the greater the porosity of the material, the better it will adsorb,” Barron said. “So people have been synthesizing materials to maximize both. It turns out that’s kind of a dead area of research because once you get to a critical number, no matter how high you get after that, they don’t improve absorption.”
Researchers tested a number of carbon capture materials and found that once a sorbent substance reached a surface area of 2,800 square meters per gram and a pore volume of 1.35 cubic centimeters per gram, the efficiency of that material was maxed out.
