This news article was originally written in Spanish. It has been automatically translated for your convenience. Reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate translation, however, no automated translation is perfect nor is it intended to replace a human translator. The original article in Spanish can be viewed at Científicos de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide desarrollan filtros para capturar y aprovechar CO2

The Pablo de Olavide University scientists develop filters to capture and take advantage of CO2

14/12/2009

December 14, 2009

A group of scientists of the Pablo de Olavide University, led by the researcher Sofia Calero, works in the design of new more effective and cheaper materials intended to serve as a filter for the capture, separation, removal and energy use of industrial emissions from greenhouse gases. Companies such as Chevron-Texaco and Abengoa have been interested in the potential results of this excellence project, funded by the Ministry of innovation, science and business of the Junta de Andalucía with 297.668 euros.

The use of these filters would be an option as a method to end of pipe. This brings many advantages, because that is a settlement located at the end of the manufacturing process, which means not having to make major reforms in the facilities. For this reason, the challenge of this project is to obtain highly selective and low-cost materials with great ability to capture and separation of the different greenhouse gases at the same time.

For its realization, the Pablo de Olavide scientists work to scale nanometer porous crystalline materials. They use both inorganic materials (type zeolite) as materials metalorgánicos (type MOF), changing them to make them suitable for the purpose they are looking for. "We have material which, by its pore size, are ideal to capture CO_2". "We study them how adsorben particles from gas and we will 'tunning them', i.e., tried to change its structure, for example, placing silver or zinc where there are copper and see what effect this has on the adsorption and diffusion", says Sofia Calero.