Turning the Tide on Climate Change: MIT’s Game-Changing CO2 Removal from Ocean Water

Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, largely caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, which results in an increasing level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

Researchers are looking for effective and efficient ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to mitigate the effects of climate change, and one potential solution is the direct removal of CO2 from ocean water.

The ocean is the planet's main "sink" for atmospheric CO2, absorbing 30 to 40% of all gas produced by human activity, making it a promising approach to reducing CO2 emissions and achieving net negative emissions.

Existing methods of removing CO2 from seawater require expensive membranes and chemicals, but a team of researchers from MIT has come up with a new process consisting of membrane-free electrochemical cells that are reversible and inexpensive.

The new process created by the MIT team uses reactive electrodes to release protons to seawater fed to the cells, driving the release of dissolved carbon dioxide from the water.

The process is cyclic, acidifying the water to convert dissolved inorganic bicarbonates to molecular carbon dioxide, which is collected as a gas under vacuum, and then fed to a second set of cells with a reversed voltage to recover the protons and turn the acidic water back to alkaline before releasing it back into the sea.

The reinjection of alkaline water and removal of carbon dioxide can slowly reverse the acidification of the oceans caused by carbon dioxide accumulation, which has threatened coral reefs and shellfish, and the reinjection of alkaline water could be done through dispersed outlets or far offshore to avoid disrupting ecosystems.

Once the CO2 is removed from the water, it must be disposed of, and it can be buried in deep geologic formations under the sea floor or chemically converted into a compound like ethanol that can be used as a transportation fuel or into other specialty chemicals.

The development of a new, reversible process for removing carbon dioxide from seawater created by the MIT team holds great potential for mitigating the effects of carbon emissions on the environment and offers a more affordable and sustainable solution compared to existing methods.

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