Carbon dioxide (CO2) can be transformed back into carbon at a minimal energy cost thanks to a new catalyst reported by researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in their recent Nature Communications article.
Carbon dioxide emitted by human activity is a critical factor in accelerating climate change, and must be addressed to reduce the resulting harmful impacts of rising sea levels and extreme weather. In an attempt to arrest emissions, carbon capture and storage projects have been initiated around the world that aim to trap CO2 at power plants and store it in deep geological formations, but there are concerns about the CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere. This new discovery by Torben Daeneke and Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh transforms dissolved CO2 into solid carbon, which could be stored more easily or even used as an energy storage material.
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