Researchers at Harvard University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recently developed a novel emissions-scrubbing system that's less power hungry and uses more environmentally-friendly components.

They discovered a way to use ordinary baking soda to capture carbon dioxide.

Like Us on Facebook

The new carbon capture media made up of core-shell microcapsules whose highly permeable polymer shell contains a sodium carbonate solution, which reacts with and absorbs carbon dioxide. Sodium carbonate makes-up a large part of baking soda.

The new system utilizes microcapsules made of liquid sorbents encased in highly permeable polymer shells.

"Microcapsules have been used in a variety of applications- for example, in pharmaceuticals, food flavoring, cosmetics, and agriculture-for controlled delivery and release, but this is one of the first demonstrations of this approach for controlled capture," said Jennifer Lewis, a professor of biologically-inspired engineering at Harvard.

The main benefit of using carbonates is that they aren't harmful to the environment. Caustic fluids such as monoethanol amine are currently used in carbon capture programs, but they present an environmental risk.

The fact that the fluid is encapsulated means it will never come into contact with equipment and the carbonate doesn't react with other gases as more caustic absorbents do.

The engineers said their novel method can also be used in industrial processes like steel and cement production, which are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Using sodium carbonate doesn't require any complex chemical processes like the production of amines does, nor does it have any recycling issues.

The team is currently working on ways to scale up their technique.

The report was published in the journal, Nature Communications.

Tagsbaking soda, carbon dioxide, Microcapsules, Carbon emission, greenhouse effect, global warming