ELY: According to researchers they have found a way to clean the air of carbon dioxide simply by using baking soda.
To do the job, the team created microcapsules made of a polymer shell that is highly permeable. They also developed a fluid consisting of sodium carbonate solution to take out the carbon dioxide from coal and natural gas eliminated by power plants.
If it works, this new technology would be the first one to capture CO2.
The new technology was the result of the works of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of Illinois and Harvard.
Apparently, the designed microcapsules can do the job of cleaning the air of carbon dioxide but the process might be harmful to the environment. According to Capitol.com, “The main desire of the research team was to find a solution that allowed them to move away from using caustic fluids, like mono ethanol amine, to catch carbon dioxide and use less harmful substances, such as carbonates.
The use of baking soda as an active chemical was an essential development, explained researcher Roger Aines from Lawrence Livermore. He added that corrosiveness worked at improved levels as the chemical compound was more benign and was always incapsulated.”
Aines from Lawrence Livermore said that the use of baking soda as an active chemical was an essential development. The corrosiveness worked at improved levels as the chemical compound was more benign and was always incapsulated according to Aines.
Currently, Aines and his team are using amine for the encapsulation but with baking soda as a replacement, the researchers believe that it will work better because baking soda does not lose its properties unlike amine. Besides, baking soda can be reused as long as it is there.
