Low-cost carbon filter removes 90pct of CO2 from smokestack gases

Washington, May 20 : A team of researchers in Wyoming has developed a low-cost carbon filter that can remove 90 percent of carbon dioxide gas from the smokestacks of electric power plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels.

Coal-burning electric power plants are major sources of the greenhouse gas.

Maciej Radosz and colleagues at Wyoming's Soft Materials Laboratory cite the pressing need for simple, inexpensive new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from smokestack gases.

To meet the need, they have designed a new carbon dioxide-capture process, called a Carbon Filter Process.

The process uses a simple, low-cost filter filled with porous carbonaceous sorbent that works at low pressures.

Modelling data and laboratory tests suggest that the device works better than existing technologies at a fraction of their cost.

Their study will be published in the May 21 issue of ACS' monthly journal, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research.

ANI