Graduate student unveils plant-inspired tech that pulls harmful toxin from air: 'Totally different than what anybody else is doing'

A Cornell graduate student developed what's being called the first light-powered separation system for both carbon capture and release, and it's based on photosynthesis.

As we continue to try to shift away from dirty fuel sources and get our energy from renewables, carbon capture is being used to help balance the equation.

But the technology is expensive and energy-intensive. It frequently relies on energy generated from fossil fuels to drive the carbon capture process, which is counterintuitive since they produce more of the same pollution.

Cornell's Bayu Ahmad, the first author of the study, discovered a way to separate carbon dioxide from industrial sources by mimicking the natural mechanism that plants use to store carbon, according to a report in the Cornell Chronicle.

"From a chemistry standpoint, this is totally different than what anybody else is doing in carbon capture," said senior author Phillip Milner, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"The whole mechanism was Bayu's idea, and when he originally showed it to me, I thought it would never work. It totally works," Milner added.

The report explained that carbon dioxide is challenging to capture because it's inert, leading many scientists to use amines — organic, ammonia-derived compounds that contain nitrogen — which selectively react with CO2.

However, since amines are unstable in oxygen, the systems require a lot of energy to produce a large number of them.

This led the lab to adopt the motto of "anything but amines" in its quest for sustainable solutions.

The system the researchers created used the same mechanism as the enzyme RuBisCo, which drives photosynthesis and helps fix carbon in plants.

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Capturing the CO2 involved an inexpensive sorbent called 2-methylbenzophenone, and it was found to be equal to or better than other light-driven capture methods.

To release that stored carbon dioxide, the researchers changed the pH to enable decarboxylation, or the removal of a carboxyl group, the report explained.

Real-world testing with samples from Cornell's Combined Heat and Power Building, an on-campus power plant that burns natural gas, proved successful in isolating carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture and storage projects already contain around 45 million tons of CO2 annually, which is equivalent to the pollution of 10 million passenger cars, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report.

Those carbon emissions are generally captured from large industrial pollution sources, such as plants that make cement, steel, or chemicals, and then transported to storage locations, such as used-up oil and gas reservoirs.

The Cornell team envisions its technology as something that looks like a solar panel, except it would capture carbon instead of generating electricity, the report shared.

"We'd really like to get to the point where we can remove carbon dioxide from air, because I think that's the most practical," Milner said.

"You can imagine going into the desert, you put up these panels that are sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into pure high-pressure carbon dioxide. We could then put it in a pipeline or convert it into something on-site," Milner added.

While the world continues to reduce pollution through renewable sources, including solar, wind, and hydro, carbon capture and storage advancements offer a necessary stopgap measure until the green energy transition is complete.

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