The Problem

If you don’t already know, the U.S. uses coal to produce over half of the country’s energy, and since it’s readily available, it doesn’t look like we’re going to stop using it anytime soon.

What’s bad is that coal is one of the worst contributors to global warming because it contains high amounts of carbon, and when it’s burned, that produces carbon dioxide.

What’s even worse is that President Bush said that capturing carbon was a top energy priority, but the Department of Energy’s budget begs to differ.

You can read a great story about our carbon crisis at the International Herald Tribune’s website here.

Professor Christopher Jones, along with graduate students Jason Hicks and Jeffrey Drese, worked with Department of Energy scientists Daniel Fauth and McMahon Gray to create the amazing new material, known as hyperbranched aluminosilica (for scientifically-deficient people like me, it’s also called HAS).

This HAS material, when in contact with the excessive heat from coal-burning smokestacks, can successfully absorb up to 5 times more carbon dioxide than other reusable material out there.

So where does the carbon dioxide go? It can be thermally recycled back into the depths of the ocean, underground in coal mines or in petroleum reservoirs.

The Challenge

The two main problems the researchers face are how to manage the heat absorbed by the material and how to pay for the overall cost.

According to Jones, “You must control the production of heat by the adsorption step, and you don’t want to put any more energy into the desorption process than necessary.” So finding a healthy balance between the two is the next step in their research.

As for the cost, the HAS material is inexpensive, but having enough of it for the thousands of coal-burning power plants in the country could get expensive. But I think that since the material is reusable, it will significantly reduce both costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

For more information about this story, you can read the entire ENN news article here.

I think that is a breakthrough discovery that could have a dramatic impact on the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into our air. This material may not be the cure for global warming, but at least it’s a start, and we should support every environmental initiative that we can…especially when it’s something discovered by college staff and students!