Scientists at the University of York have used sea water collected from Whitby in North Yorkshire, and scrap metal to develop a technology that could help capture more than 850 million tonnes of unwanted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Scientists at the University of York have used sea water collected from Whitby in North Yorkshire, and scrap metal to develop a technology that could help capture more than 850 million tonnes of unwanted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a major contributor to greenhouse gases and global warming. Carbon overload is mainly the result of burning fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, as well as deforestation.
Global efforts are being made to reduce carbon dioxide levels as well as find novel ways of trapping excess gases from the atmosphere. The team at York have now found a way to safely trap the gas as dawsonite, a solid mineral and natural component of the Earth’s crust.
Professor Michael North, from the University’s Department of Chemistry, said: “We wanted to look for methods of trapping the gas using environmentally friendly tools to produce a result that could be highly scalable to capture millions of tonnes of unwanted carbon dioxide.
Read more at University of York
