New Material Sucks Up CO2 From Air Like a Pro

A powder that can clean the air of carbon dioxide (CO2) just by sitting there. Sounds like magic, right? Well, scientists at UC Berkeley have made it happen! They've created a special powder called COF-999 that can soak up CO2 from the air around us. It's like a tiny, invisible sponge working to fight the climate crisis. This powder isn't like regular sponges. It uses something called adsorption to trap CO2 on its surface. No, that's not a typo! Adsorption is like when you stick a sticker to a wall – it stays there but doesn't soak in. This is a big deal because current carbon capture methods mostly work on high CO2 concentrations, like at the end of power plant flues. The best part? Just 200 grams of this material can remove 20 kilograms of CO2 in a year. That's a lot of heavy lifting for something so small! And it can be used in existing carbon capture systems to clean up even more CO2 from both flues and the atmosphere. "We're trying to turn back time, " said Zihui Zhou, a UC Berkeley graduate student. "The CO2 levels in our air are higher than ever. If we want to bring them down, we need direct air capture methods like this. " COF-999 is a tough cookie. It can handle being used over and over again without losing its CO2-sucking power. And it's already better than anything else out there. But the team isn't stopping there. They want to make it even better using machine learning. While this new material is exciting, we can't forget the big picture. To truly fight the climate crisis, we need to cut down on emissions and make sure countries stick to the Paris Agreement. Better carbon capture is just one piece of the puzzle.