There is progress on carbon capture technology. Now I’m not scientifically illiterate, but I won’t claim to understand this story. What I gather is that earlier technologies used a lot of energy or required a lot of chemical inputs, or both, and this is an improvement.
Incumbent technologies are inherently inefficient due to thermal energy losses, large footprint, or degradation of sorbent material. We report a solid-state faradaic electro-swing reactive adsorption system comprising an electrochemical cell that exploits the reductive addition of CO2 to quinones for carbon capture. The reported device is compact and flexible, obviates the need for ancillary equipment, and eliminates the parasitic energy losses by using electrochemically activated redox carriers. An electrochemical cell with a polyanthraquinone–carbon nanotube composite negative electrode captures CO2 upon charging via the carboxylation of reduced quinones, and releases CO2 upon discharge.
Energy and Environmental Science
Sounds good. Of course, the moral hazard is that each technological advance like this is just seen as a license to pollute even more. I’m not going to stop yelling at those Exxon commercials where they talk about “plants a little more like plants”. YOU DIRTY MOTHERFUCKERS, YOU DELIBERATELY LIED TO US FOR 60 YEARS AND DESTROYED THE EARTH! NOW SHUT UP! Sorry, I lost control for a second there. I really hate that commercial. I never promised this blog would be 100% family friendly. Well, you know who is trying to kill your family and everybody else’s family? EXXON.