The search for a material that can soak up high volumes of CO₂, at a low cost, remains a tantalizing goal at labs around the world.  Ideally such a material will mop up lots of CO₂ under certain conditions, but happily let it go under others. Likewise, it should be particular to CO₂, such that it won’t absorb other gases. And it should be fairly stable across a range of chemical conditions and heat levels. Last but not least, it shouldn’t be too costly.Earlier this month, chemists at Lehigh University, in eastern Pennsylvania, released findings of a new porous material that promises to do all that, and maybe more. The researchers, Kai Landskron, Paritosh Mohanty and Lillian D. Kull reported their findings on 19 July in the journal Nature Communications.

Results of the study show that the new material captures CO₂ almost as well as more expensive materials in use today, but works at lower pressures, and is stable at temperatures as high as 752 degrees Fahrenheit. The combination suggests it would be cheaper to deploy given that current materials achieve optimal performance only in conditions that are costlier to maintain.

Quoted by Australia’s ABC News, lead research Dr Landskron said he believes the material can be mass produced on a large scale. “We can make this material… simpler than most other materials can be made,” he said. “We can make them from relatively inexpensive building blocks in simple solution reactions, by so-called polycondensation reactions.”

The material still has a long way to get from lab to power plant though. CSIRO’s Dr Lincoln Paterson, who focuses on carbon capture, told ABC News’ Meredith Griffiths that Dr Landskron’s work is a fundamental advance but “…still needs to be taken a long way towards practical application.” He added: “The tests they’ve got so far are that it performs extremely well in the laboratory and it uses low cost materials.”

For those with the appetite, here’s what I could find on the chemical recipe for this new material. According to USA Today, the team reacted two chemicals, hexachlorocyclotriphosphazene and diaminobenzidine, to create a gel. Once dried the material formed porous electron-rich covalent organonitridic frameworks (or PECONFs) that proved to have a strong appetite for CO₂.

Here’s how the researchers describe it in their abstract:

Here we report the synthesis and CO₂, CH₄, and N₂ adsorption properties of hierarchically porous electron-rich covalent organonitridic frameworks (PECONFs). These were prepared by simple condensation reactions between inexpensive, commercially available nitridic and electron-rich aromatic building units. The PECONF materials exhibit high and reversible CO₂ and CH₄ uptake and exceptional selectivities of these gases over N₂. The materials do not oxidize in air up to temperature of 400 °C.

For a deeper dive, click through to the full article here: “Porous covalent electron-rich organonitridic frameworks as highly selective sorbents for methane and carbon dioxide.” (Subscription required.)

This is just the latest in a string of research findings looking for lower cost sorbent materials. Back in April, I checked out promising lab work showing that a form of treated sawdust might offer an affordable option as a CO₂ sorbent. See ‘Capturing carbon with sawdust‘ 6 April, 2011.